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RELIGION : A Dialogue
and Other Essays

ESSAYS OF

A. SCHOPENHAUER

Translated by
T. BAILEY SAUNDERS, M.A.

i. The Wisdom of Life

2. Counsels and Maxims

3. Religion: A Dialogue and Other

Essays

4. The Art of Literature

5. Studies in Pessimism

6. The Art of Controversy

7. On Human Nature

London : GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD.
RUSKIN HOUSE, 40 MUSEUM ST., W.C.

RELIGION: A Dialogue

AND OTHER ESSAYS

By ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER

Vitam impendere vero. — Juvenal

SELECTED AND TRANSLATED BY

T. BAILEY SAUNDERS, M.A.

LONDON : GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD.
RUSKIN HOUSE, MUSEUM STREET, W.C.

NEW YORK :::::::: THE MACMILLAN CO.

I

es

First Edition, August 1889
Second Edition, April 1893
Third Edition, July 1899
Fourth Edition, November 1904
Fifth Edition, January 1910
Sixth Edition, April 1915

NOTE TO THE THIRD EDITION.

As a third edition of this little volume is called for, I have
taken the opportunity of adding two more Essays : the brief
dialogue on The Failure of Philosophy, and some observa-
tions on The Metaphysics of Fine Art. The latter Essay is
a rendering of such portions of a chapter in the original,
entitled Zur Metaphysik des Schönen, as appear to be gene-
rally interesting and easily intelligible. The chief statement
of Schopenhauer's view of Art is to be found in his large
work ; but as he gives a short essay in his Parerga, I have
thought it well to include it in this selection.

The Prefatory Note to be found in the first and second
editions of this volume is here omitted. It is now incor-
porated with the main Preface to the series in The Wisdom
of Life.

T. B. S.

Feb.. 1891.

CONTENTS.

Religion : A Dialogue .
A Few Words on Pantheism
On Books and Reading
On Physiognomy .
Psychological Observations
The Christian System .
The Failure of Philosophy
The Metaphysics of Fine Art

Page

I

53 ■ -

59

73

87'
103— -

119

125

RELIGION

A DIALOGUE.

DEMOPHELES— PHILALETHES.

RELIGION:

A DIALOGUE.

Demopheles Between ourselves, my dear fellow, 1
don't care about the way you sometimes have of
exhibiting your talent for philosophy ; you make
religion a subject for sarcastic remarks, and even for
open ridicule. Everyone thinks his religion sacred,
and therefore you ought to respect it.

Philalethes. That doesn't follow ! I don't see why,
because other people are simpletons, I should have any
regard for a pack of lies. I respect truth everywhere,
and so I can't respect what is opposed to it. My
maxim is Vigeat Veritas et per eat mundus, like the
lawyers' Fiat justitia et pereat mundus. Every pro-
fession ought to have an analogous device.

Demopheles. Then I suppose doctors should say
Fiant pilulae et pereat mundus, — there wouldn't be
much difficulty about that !

Philalethes. Heaven forbid ! You must take every-
thing cum grano satis.

Demopheles. Exactly ; that's why I want you to
take religion cum arano satis. I want you to see that

4 tttLIGlON .

you must meet the requirements of the people accord-
ing to the measure of their comprehension. Where
you have masses of people, of crude susceptibilities and
clumsy intelligence, sordid in their pursuits and sunk
in drudgery, religion provides the only means of pro-
claiming and making them feel the high import of
life. For the average man takes an interest, primarily.
in nothing but what will satisfy his physical needs
and hankerings, and beyond this, give him a little
amusement and pastime. Founders of religion and
philosophers come into the world to rouse him from
his stupor and point to the lofty meaning of existence ;
philosophers for the few, the emancipated, founders of
religion for the many, for humanity at large. For, as
your friend Plato has said, the multitude can't be
philosophers, and you shouldn't forget that. Religion
is the metaphysics of the masses ; by all means let
them keep it : let it therefore command external re-
spect, for to discredit it is to take it away. Just as
they have popular poetry, and the popular wisdom of
proverbs, so they must have popular metaphysics too :
for mankind absolutely needs an interpretation of
life; and this, again, must be suited to popular com-
prehension. Consequently, this interpretation is
always an allegorical investiture of the truth ; and in
practical life and in its effects on the feelings, that is
to say, as a rule of action and as a comfort and con
solation in suffering and death, it accomplishes per-
haps just as much as the truth itself could achieve if
we possessed it. Don't take offence at its unkempt,
grotesque and apparently absurd form ; for with your
education and learning, you havo no idea of the round-

A DIALOGUE. 0

about ways by which people in their crude state have
to receive their knowledge of deep truths. The
various religions are only various forms in which the
truth, which taken by itself is above their compre-
hension, is grasped and realised by the masses ; and
truth becomes inseparable from these forms. There-
fore, my dear sir, don't take it amiss if I say that to
make a mockery of these forms is both shallow and
unjust.

Philalethes. But isn't it every bit as shallow and
unjust to demand that there shall be no other system
of metaphysics but this one, cut out as it is to suit the
requirements and comprehension of the masses ? that
its doctrines shall be the limit of human speculation,
the standard of all thought, so that the metaphysics
of the few, the emancipated, as you call them, must be
devoted only to confirming, strengthening, and ex-
plaining the metaphysics of the masses ? that the
highest powers of human intelligence shall remain
unused and undeveloped, even be nipped in the bud,
in order that their activity may not thwart the
popular metaphysics ? And isn't this just the very
claim which religion sets up ? Isn't it a little too
much to have tolerance and delicate forbearance
preached by what is intolerance and cruelty itself ?
Think of the heretical tribunals, inquisitions, religious
wars, crusades, Socrates' cup of poison, Bruno's and
Vanini's death in the flames ! Is all this to-day quite
a thing of the past ? How can genuine philosophical
effort, sincere search after truth, the noblest calling1 of
the noblest men, be let and hindered more completely
than by a conventional system of metaphysics enjoy-

6 RELIGION :

ing a State monopoly, the principles of which are
impressed into every head in earliest youth so
earnestly, so deeply, and so firmly, that, unless the
mind is miraculously elastic, they remain indelible.
In this way the groundwork of all healthy reason is
once for all deranged ; that is to say, the capacity for
original thought and unbiased judgment, which is
weak enough in itself, is, in regard to those subjects
to which it might be applied, for ever paralysed and
ruined.

Demopheles. Which means, I suppose, that people
have arrived at a conviction which they won't give
up in order to embrace yours instead.

Philalethes. Ah ! if it. were only a conviction based
on insight. Then one could bring arguments to bear,
and the battle would be fought with equal weapons.
But religions admittedly appeal, not to conviction as
the result of argument, but to belief as demanded by
revelation ; and as the capacity for believing is
strongest in childhood special care is taken to make
sure of this tender age. This has much more to do
with the doctrines of belief taking root than threats
and reports of miracles. If, in early childhood, cer-
tain fundamental views and doctrines are paraded with
unusual solemnity, and an air of the greatest earnest*
ness never before visible in anything else ; if, at the
same time, the possibility of a doubt about them be
completely passed over, or touched upon only to
indicate that doubt is the first step to eternal perdition,
the resulting impression will be so deep that, as a
rale, that is, in almost every case, doubt about them
will be almost as impossible as doubt about one's own

A DIALOGUE. 7

existence. Hardly one in ten thousand will have the
strength of mind to ask himself seriously and
earnestly — is that true ? To call such as can do it
strong minds, esprits forts, is a description apter than
is generally supposed. But for the ordinary mind
chere is nothing so absurd or revolting but what, if
inculcated in that way, the strongest belief in it will
strike root. If, for example, the killing of a heretic or
infidel were essential to the future salvation of his
soul, almost everyone would make it the chief event
of his life, and in dying would draw consolation and
strength from the remembrance that he had suc-
ceeded. As a matter of fact, almost every Spaniard
in days gone by used to look upon an auto da fe as
the most pious of all acts and one most agreeable tu
God. A parallel to this may be found in the way in
which the Thugs (a religious sect in India, suppressed
a short time ago by the English, who executed
numbers of them) express their sense of religion and
their veneration for the goddess Kali ; they take every
opportunity of murdering their friends and travelling
companions, with the object of getting possession oi
their goods, and in the serious conviction that they
are thereby doing a praiseworthy action, conducive to
their eternal welfare.* The power of religious dogma,
when inculcated early, is such as to stifle conscience,
compassion and finally every feeling of humanity.
But if you want to see with your own eyes and close
at hand what timely inoculation of belief will accom-
plish, look at the English. Here is a nation favoured

* Cf. Illustrations of the history and practice of the Thugs,
London, 1837 ; also the Edinburgh Review, Oct. -Jan., 1836-7.

8 religiox :

before all others by nature ; endowed, more than all
others, with discernment, intelligence, power of judg-
ment, strength of character; look at them, abased
and made ridiculous, beyond all others, by their stupid
ecclesiastical superstition, which appears amongst
their other abilities like a fixed idea or monomania.
For this they have to thank the circumstance that
education is in the hands of the clergy, whose en-
deavour it is to impress all the articles of belief, at the
earliest age, in a way that amounts to a kind of
paralysis of the brain ; this in its turn expresses itself
all their life in an idiotic bigotry, which makes other-
wise most sensible and intelligent people amongst
them degrade themselves so that one can't make head
or tail of them. If you consider how essential to such
a masterpiece is inoculation in the tender age of
childhood, the missionary system appears no longer
only as the acme of human importunity, arrogance
and impertinence, but also as an absurdity, if it doesn't
confine itself to nations which are still in their
infancy, like Caffirs, Hottentots, South Sea Islanders,
etc. Amongst these races it is successful ; but in
India the Brahmans treat the discourses of the mis-
sionaries with contemptuous smiles of approbation, or
simply shrug their shoulders. Nay, one may say
generally that the proselytising efforts of the mission-
aries in India, in spite of the most advantageous facil-
ities, are, as a rule, a failure. An authentic report in
Vol. XXI. of the Asiatic Journal (1826) states that
after so many years of missionary activity not more
than three hundred living converts were to be found
in the whole of India, where the population of the

A DIALOGUE. 9

English possessions alone comes to one hundred and
fifteen millions ; and at the same time it is admitted
that the Christian converts are distinguished for their
extreme immorality. Three hundred venal and bribed
souls out of so many millions ! There is no evidence
that things have gone better with Christianity in
India since then, in spite of the fact that the missionaries
are now trying, contrary to stipulation and in schools
exclusively designed for secular English instruction,
to work upon the children's minds as they please, in
order to smuggle in Christianity ; against which the
Hindoos are most jealously on their guard. As I
have said, childhood is the time to sow the seeds of
belief, and not manhood ; more especially where an
earlier faith has taken root. An acquired conviction
such as is feigned by adults is, as a rule, only the
mask for some kind of personal interest. It is just
the feeling that this is almost bound to be the case
which makes a man who has changed his religion in
mature years an object of contempt to most people
everywhere ; who thus show that they look upon
religion, not as a matter of reasoned conviction, but
merely as a belief inoculated in childhood, before any
test can be applied. Yet that they are right in their
view of religion is also obvious from the way in which
not only the masses, who are blindly credulous, but
also the clergy of every religion, who, as such, have
faithfully and zealously studied its sources, founda-
tions, dogmas and disputed points, cleave as a body
to the religion of their particular country ; conse-
quently for a minister of one religion or confession to
go over to another is the rarest thing in the world

10 RELIGION :

The Catholic clergy, for example, are fully convinced
of the truth of all the tenets of their Church, and so
are the Protestant clergy of theirs, and both defend
the principles of their creeds with like zeal. However,
the conviction is governed merely by the country
native to each ; to the South German ecclesiastic the
truth of the Catholic dogma is quite obvious, to the
North German, the Protestant. If, then, these con-
victions are based on objective reasons, the reasons
must be climatic, and thrive, like plants, some only
here, some only there. The convictions of those who
are thus locally convinced are taken on trust and
believed by the masses everywhere.

Demopheles. Well, no harm is done, and it doesn't
make any real difference. As a fact, Protestantism is
more suited to the north, Catholicism to the south.

Philalethes. So it seems. Still 1 take a higher
standpoint, and keep in view a more important
object, the progress, namely, of the knowledge of
truth among mankind. From such a point of view,
it is a terrible thing that, wherever a man is born,
certain propositions are inculcated in him in earliest
youth, and he is assured that he may never have any
doubts about them, under penalty of thereby forfeit-
ing eternal salvation ; propositions, I mean, which
affect the foundation of all our other knowledge and
accordingly determine for ever, and, if they are false,
distort for ever, the point of view from which our
knowledge starts ; and as, further, the corollaries of
these propositions touch the entire system of our
intellectual attainments at every point, the whole uf
human knowledge is thoroughly adulterated by them

A DIALOGUE 11

Evidence of this is afforded by every literature ; the
most striking by that of the Middle Age, but in a too
considerable degree by that of the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries. Look at even the first minds of
all those epochs ; how paralysed they are by false
fundamental positions liko these; how, more especially,
all insight into the true constitution and working of
Nature is, as it were, blocked up. During the whole
of the Christian period Theism presents a solid
barrier to all intellectual effort, and chiefly to philo-
sophy» arresting or stunting all progress. For the
scientific men of these ages God, devil, angels,
demons hid the whole of nature ; no enquiry was
followed to the end, nothing ever thoroughly ex-
amined ; everything which went beyond the most
obvious causal nexus was immediately set down to
those personalities. " It was at once explained by a
reference to God, angels or demons," as Pomponatius
expressed himself when the matter was being dis-
cussed, " and philosophers at any rate have nothing
analogous." There is, to be sure, a suspicion of irony
in this statement of Pomponatius, as his perfidy in
other matters is known ; still, he is only giving ex-
pression to the general way of thinking of his age.
But if, on the other hand, any one possessed the rare
quality of an elastic mind, which alone could burst the
bonds, his writings and he himself with them were
burnt; as happened to Bruno and Vanini. How com-
pletely an ordinary mind is paralysed by that early
preparation in metaphysics is seen in the most vivid
way and on its most ridiculous side, whenever it
undertakes to criticise the doctrines of an alien creed,

12 RELIGION :

The efforts of the ordinary man are generally found
to be directed to a careful exhibition of the in-
congruity of its dogmas with those of his own belief:
he is at great pains to show that not only do they
not say, but certainly do not mean, the same thing ;
and with that he thinks, in his simplicity, that he has
demonstrated the falsehood of the alien creed. He
really never dreams of putting the question which of
the two may be right ; his own articles of belief he
looks upon as ä priori true and certain principles.

Demopheles. So that's your higher point of view !
I assure you there is a higher still. First live, then
philosophise is a maxim of more comprehensive import
than appears at first sight. The first thing to do is
to control the raw and evil dispositions of the masses,
so as to keep them from pushing injustice to extremes,
and from committing cruel, violent and disgraceful
acts. If you were to wait until they had recognised
and grasped the truth, you would undoubtedly come
too late ; and truth, supposing that it had been found,
would surpass their powers of comprehension. In
any case an allegorical investiture of it, a parable or
myth, is all that would be of any service to them.
As Kant said, there must be a public standard of
Right and Virtue ; it must always flutter high over-
head. It is a matter of indifference what heraldic
figures are inscribed on it, so long as they signify
what is meant. Such an allegorical representation of
truth is always and everywhere, for humanity at
large, a serviceable substitute for a truth to which
it can never attain, for a philosophy which it can
never grasp ; let alone the fact that it is daily chancr-

A DIALOGUE 13

ing its shape, and has in no form as yet met with
general acceptance. Practical aims, then, my good
Philalethes, are in every respect superior to theor-
etical.

Philaletlies. What you say is very like the ancient
advice of Timseus of Locrus, the Pythagorean, stop
the mind with falsehood if you can't speed it with
truth. I almost suspect that your plan äs the one
which is so much in vogue just now, that you want to
impress upon us that

The hour is nigh
When we may feast in quiet.

You recommend us, in fact, to take timely precau-
tions, so that the waves of the discontented raging
masses mayn't disturb us at table. But the whole
point of view is as false as it is now-a-days popular
and commended ; and so I make haste to enter a
protest against it. It is false that state, justice, law
cannot be upheld without the assistance of religion
and its dogmas ; and that justice and public order
need religion as a necessary complement, if legislative
enactments are to be carried out. It is false, were it
repeated a hundred times ! An effective and striking
argument to the contrary is afforded by the ancients,
especially the Greeks. They had nothing at all of
what we understand by religion. They had no sacred
documents, no dogma to be learned and its acceptance
furthered by everyone, its principles to be inculcated
early on the young. Just as little was moral doctrine
preached by the ministers of religion, nor did the
priests trouble themselves about morality or about

14 RELIGION :

what the people did or left undone, Not at, all. The
duty of the priests was confined to temple-ceremonial,
prayers, hymns, sacrifices, processions, lustrations and
the like, the object of which was anything but the
moral improvement of the individual. What was
called religion consisted, more especially in the
cities, in giving temples here and there to some of the
gods of the greater tribes, in which the worship
described was carried on as a state matter, and was
consequently, in fact, an affair of police. No one,
except the functionaries performing, was in any way
compelled to attend, or even to believe in it. In the
whole of antiquity there is no trace of any obligation
to believe in any particular dogma. Merely in the
case of an open denial of the existence of the gods, or
any other reviling of them, a penalty was imposed,
and that on account of the insult offered to the state,
which served those gods : beyond this it was free to
everyone to think of them what he pleased. If any-
one wanted to gain the favour of those gods privately,
by prayer or sacrifice, it was open to him to do so at
his own expense and at his own risk ; if be didn't do
it, no one made any objection, least of all the state;
In the case of the Romans everyone had his own
Lares and Penates at home ; these were, however, in
reality, only the venerated busts of ancestors. Of
the immortality of the soul and a life beyond the
grave, the ancients had no firm, clear or, least of all.
dogmatically fixed idea, but very loose, fluctuating,
indefinite and problematical notions, everyone in hi«
own way : and the ideas about the gods were just as
varying, individual and vague. There was therefore

A DIALOGUE. lö

really no religion, in our sense of the word, amongst
the ancients. But did anarchy and lawlessness pre-
vail amongst them on that account ? Is not law and
civil order, rather, so much their work, that it still
forms the foundation of our own ? Was there not
complete protection for property, even though it con-
sisted for the most part of slaves ? And did not this
state of things last for more than a thousand years ?
So that I can't recognise, I must even protest against
the practical aims and the necessity of religion in the
sense indicated by you, and so popular now-a-days,
that is, as an indispensable foundation of all legislative
arrangements. For, if you take that point of view,
the pure and sacred endeavour after truth will,
to say the least, appear quixotic, and even criminal, if
it ventures, in its feeling of justice, to denounce the
authoritative creed as a usurper who has taken
possession of the throne of truth and maintained his
position by keeping up the deception.

Demopheles. But religion is not opposed to truth ;
it itself teaches truth. And as the range of its activity
is not a narrow lecture room, but the world and
humanity at large, religion must conform to the re-
quirements and comprehension of an audience so
numerous and so mixed. Religion must not let truth
appear in its naked form ; or, to use a medical simile,
it must not exhibit it pure, but must employ a mythi-
cal vehicle, a medium, as it were. You can also
compare truth in this respect to certain chemical stuffs
"which in themselves are gaseous, but which for
medicinal uses, as also for preservation or transmis-
sion, must be bound to a stable, solid base, because

16 RELIGION :

they would otherwise volatilise. Chlorine gas, for
example, is for all purposes applied only in the form
of chlorides. But if truth, pure, abstract and free
from all mythical alloy, is always to remain unattain-
able, even by philosophers, it might be compared to
fluorine, which cannot even be isolated, but must
always appear in combination with other elements.
Or, to take a less scientific simile, truth, which is
inexpressible except by means of myth and allegory,
is like water, which can be carried about only in
vessels ; a philosopher who insists on obtaining it
pure is like a man who breaks the jug in order to get
the water by itself. This is, perhaps, an exact
analogy. At any rate, religion is truth allegorically
and mythically expressed, and so rendered attainable
and digestible by mankind in general. Mankind
couldn't possibly take it pure and unmixed, just as we
can't breathe pure oxygen ; we require an addition of
four times its bulk in nitrogen. In plain language,
the profound meaning, the high aim of life, can only
be unfolded and presented to the masses symbolically,
because they are incapable of grasping it in its true
signification. Philosophy, on the other hand, should
be like the Eleusinian mysteries, for the few, the elite.
Philalethes. I understand. It comes, in short, to
truth wearing the garment of falsehood. But in do-
ing so it enters on a fatal alliance. What a dangerous
weapon is put into the hands of those who are
authorised to employ falsehood as the vehicle of truth !
If it is as you say, I fear the damage caused by the
falsehood will be greater than any advantage the
truth could ever produce. Of course, if the allegory

A DIALOGUE. 17

were admitted co be such, I should raise no objection ;
but with the admission it would rob itself of all
respect, and consequently, of all utility. The allegory
must, therefore, put in a claim to be true in the
proper sense of the word, and maintain the claim ;
while, at the most, it is true only in an allegorical
sense. Here lies the irreparable mischief, the perma-
nent evil ; and this is why religion has always been
and will always be in conflict with the noble endea-
vour after pure truth.

Demopheles. Oh no ! that danger is guarded against.
If religion mayn't exactly confess its allegorical
nature, it gives sufficient indication of it.

Philalethes. How so ?

Demopheles. In its mysteries. " Mystery," is in
reality only a technical theological term for religious
allegory. All religions have their mysteries. Pro-
perly speaking, a mystery is a dogma which is plainly
absurd, but which, nevertheless, conceals in itself a
lofty truth, and one which by itself would be com-
pletely incomprehensible to the ordinary understand-
ing of the raw multitude. The multitude accepts it
in this disguise on trust, and believes it, without being
led astray by the absurdity of it, which even to its
intelligence is obvious ; and in this way it participates
in the kernel of the matter so far as it is possible for
it to do so. To explain what I mean, I may add that
even in philosophy an attempt has been made to
make use of a mystery. Pascal, for example, who
was at once a pietist, a mathematician, and a philo-
sopher, says in this threefold capacity : God is every-
where centre and nowhere periphery. Malebranche

B

V

18 RELIGION :

has also the just remark : Liberty is a mystery. One
could go a step further aud maintain that in religions
everything is mystery. For to impart truth, in the
proper sense of the word, to the multitude in its raw-
state is absolutely impossible ; all that can fall to its
lot is to be enlightened by a mythological reflection of
it. Naked truth is out of place before the eyes of the
profane vulgar; it can only make its appearance thickly
veiled. Hence, it is unreasonable to require of a
religion that it shall be true in the proper sense of the
word ; and this, I may observe in passing, is now-a-
days the absurd contention of Rationalists and
Supernaturalists alike. Both start from the position
that religion must be the real truth ; and while the
former demonstrate that it is not the truth, the latter
obstinately maintain that it is ; or rather, the former
dress up and arrange the allegorical element in such
a way, that, in the proper sense of the word, it could
be true, but would be, in that case, a platitude ; while
the latter wish to maintain that it is true in the
proper sense of the word, without any further dressing ;
a belief, which, as we ought to know, is only to be
enforced by inquisitions and the stake. As a fact,
however, myth and allegory really form the proper
element of religion ; and under thin indispensable con-
dition, which is imposed by the intellectual limitation
of the multitude, religion provides a sufficient satisfac-
tion for those metaphysical requirements of mankind
which are indestructible. It takes the place of that
pure philosophical truth which is infinitely difficult
and perhaps never attainable.

Philalcth.es. Ah ! just as a wooden lüg takea +iie

A DIALOGUE. 19

place of a natural one ; it supplies what is lacking,
bai*ely does duty for it, claims to be regarded as a
natural leg, and is more or less artfully put together.
The only difference is that, whilst a natural leg as a
rule preceded the wooden one, religion has everywhere
got the start of philosophy.

Demopheles. That may be, but still for a man who
hasn't a natural leg, a wooden one is of great service.
You must bear in mind that the metaphysical needs
of mankind absolutely require satisfaction, because
the horizon of man's thoughts must have a back-
ground and not remain unbounded. Man has, as a
rule, no faculty for weighing reasons and discriminat-
ing between what is false and what is true ; and
besides, the labour which nature and the needs of
nature impose upon him, leaves him no time for such
inquiries, or for the education which they presuppose.
In his case, therefore, it is no use talking of a
reasoned conviction ; he has to fall back on belief and
authority. If a really true philosophy were to take
the place of religion, nine-tenths at least of mankind
ttrould have to receive it on authority ; that is to say,
it too would be a matter of faith, for Plato's dictum,
that the multitude can't be philosophers, will always
remain true. Authority, however, is an aüairof time and
circumstance alone, and so it can't be bestowed on that
which ha J only reason in its favour ; it must accord-
ingly be allowed to nothing but what has acquired it
in the course of history, even if it is only an allegori-
cal representation of truth. Truth in this form,
supported by authority, appeals first of all to those
elements in the human constitution which are strictly

20 RELIGION :

metaphysical, that is to say, to the need man feels of a
theory in regard to the riddle of existence which
forces itself upon his notice, a need arising from the
consciousness that behind the physical in the world
there is a metaphysical, something permanent as the
foundation of constant change. Then it appeals to
the will, to the fears and hopes of mortal beings living
in constant struggle ; for whom, accordingly, religion
creates gods and demons whom they can cry to
appease and win over. Finally, it appeals to that
moral consciousness which is undeniably present in
man, lends to it that corroboration and support with-
out which it would not easily maintain itself in the
struggle against so many temptations. It is just from
this side that religion affords an inexhaustible source
of consolation and comfort in the innumerable trials of
life, a comfort which does not leave men in death,
but rather then only unfolds its full efficacy. So
religion may be compared to one who takes a blind
man by the hand and leads him, because he is unable
to see for himself, whose concern it is to reach
his destination, not to look at everything by the
way.

Philalethes. That is certainly the strong point of
religion. If it is a fraud, it is a pious fraud ; that is
undeniable. But this makes priests something between
deceivers and teachers of morality : they daren't teach
the real truth, as you have quite rightly explained,
even if they knew it, which is not the case. A true
philosophy, then, can always exist, but not a true
religion ; true, I mean, in the proper understanding of
the word, not merely in that flowery or allegorical

A DIALOGUE. 21

sense which you have described ; a sense in which all
religions would be true, only in various degrees. It is
quite in keeping with the inextricable mixture of weal
and woe, honesty and deceit, good and evil, nobility
and baseness, which is the average characteristic of
the world everywhere, that the most important, the
most lofty, the most sacred truths can make their ap-
pearance only in combination with a lie, can even
borrow strength from a lie as from something that
works more powerfully on mankind ; and, as revela-
tion, must be ushered in by a lie. This might indeed
be regarded as the cachet of the moral world. How-
ever, we won't give up the hope that mankind will
eventually reach a point of maturity and education at
which it can on the one side produce, and on the other
receive, the true philosophy. Simplex sigillwm veri :
the naked truth must be so simple and intelligible
that it can be imparted to all in its true form, without
any admixture of myth and fable, without disguising
it in the form of religion.

Demopheles. You've no notion how stupid most
people are.

Philalethes. I am only expressing a hope which I
can't give up. If it were fulfilled, truth in its simple
and intelligible form would of course drive religion
from the place it has so long occupied as its repre-
sentative, and by that very means kept open for it.
The time would have come when religion would have
carried out her object and completed bor course; the
race she had brought to years of discretion she could
dismiss, and herself depart in peace; that would be
the euthanasia of religion. But as long as she lives,

22 RELIGION :

she has two faces, one of truth, one of fraud. Accord-
ing as you look at one or the other, you will bear her
favour or ill-will. Religion must be regarded as a
necessary evil, its necessity resting on the pitiful im-
becility of the great majority of mankind, incapable
of grasping the truth, and therefore requiring, in its
pressing need, something to take its place.

Demopheles. Really, one would think that you phil-
osophers had truth in a cupboard, and that all you
had to do was to go and get it !

Pliilalethes. Well, if we haven't got it, it is chiefly
owing to the pressure put upon philosophy by religion
at all times and in all places. People have tried to
make the expression and communication of truth,
even the contemplation and discovery of it, impossible,
by putting children, in their earliest years, into the
hands of priests to be manipulated ; to have the lines
in which their fundamental thoughts are henceforth
to run, laid down with such firmness as, in essential
matters, to be fixed and determined for this whole life.
When I take up the writings even of the best intellects
of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, (more es-
pecially if I have been engaged in Oriental studies), I
am sometimes shocked to see how they are paralysed
and hemmed in on all sides by Jewish ideas. How
can anyone think out the true philosophy when he is
prepared like this ?

Demopheles. Even if the true philosophy were to
be discovered, religion wouldn't disappear from the
world, as you seem to think. There can't be one
system of metaphysics for everybody ; that's rendered
impossible by the natural differences cf intellectual

A DIALOGUE. 23

power "between man and man, and the differences, too,
which education makes. It is a necessity for the
great majority of mankind to engage in that severe
bodily labour which cannot be dispensed with if the
ceaseless requirements of the whole race are to be
satisfied. Not only does this leave the majority no
time for education, for learning, for contemplation;
but by virtue of the hard and fast antagonism be-
tween muscles and mind, the intelligence is blunted
by so much exhausting bodily labour, and becomes j*\
heavy, clumsy, awkward and consequently incapable r
of grasping any other than quite simple situations, f
At least nine-tenths of the human race falls under this
category. But still people require a system of meta-
physics, that is, an account of the world and our
existence, because such an account belongs to the most
natural needs of mankind , they require a popular
system ; and to be popular it must combine many
rare qualities. It must be easily understood, and at
the same time possess, on the proper points, a certain
amount of obscurity, even of impenetrability ; then a
correct and satisfactory system of morality must be
bound up with its dogmas ; above all, it must afford
inexhaustible consolation in suffering and death ; the
consequence of all this is that it can only be true in
an allegorical and not in a real sense. Further, it
must have the support of an authority which is
impressive by its great age, by being universally
recognised, by its documents, their tone and utterances;
qualities which are so extremely difficult to combine
that many a man wouldn't be so ready, if he con-
sidered the matter, to help to undermine a religion,

24 RELIGION :

but would reflect that what he is attacking is a
people's most sacred treasure. If you want to form
an opinion on religion, you should always bear in
mind the character of the great multitude for which
it is destined, and form a picture to yourself of its
complete inferiority, moral and intellectual. It is
incredible how far this inferiority goes, and how
perseveringly a spark of truth will glimmer on even
under the crudest covering of monstrous fable or
grotesque ceremony, clinging indestructibly, like the
odour of musk, to everything that has once come into
contact with it. In illustration of this consider the
profound wisdom of the Upanishads, and then look at
the mad idolatry in the India of to-day, with its
pilgrimages, processions and festivities, or at the
insane and ridiculous goings-on of the Saniassi. Still
one can't deny that in all this insanity and nonsense
there lies some obscure purpose which accords with,
or is a reflection of, the profound wisdom I mentioned.
But for the brute multitude it has to be dressed up
in this form. In such a contrast as this we have the
two poles of humanity, the wisdom of the individual
and the bestiality of the many, both of which find
their point of contact in the moral sphere. That
saying from the Kurral must occur to everybody,
Common people seem to he men, hut I have never seen
anything like them. The man of education may, all
the same, interpret religion to himself cum grano
salis ; the man of learning, the contemplative spirit
may secretly exchange it for a philosophy. But here
again one philosophy wouldn't suit everybody ; by
the laws of affinity every system would draw to itself

A DIALOGUE. 25

that public to whose education and capacities it was
most suited. So there is always an inferior meta-
physical system of the schools for the educated
multitude, and a higher one for the elite. Kant's
lofty doctrine, for instance, had to be degraded to the
level of the schools and ruined by such men as Fries,
Krug and Salat. In short, here, if anywhere, Goethe's
maxim is true, One does not suit all. Pure faith in
revelation and pure metaphysics are for the two
extremes, and for the intermediate steps mutual
modifications of both in innumerable combinations
and gradations. And this is rendered necessary by
the immeasurable differences which nature and educa-
tion have placed between man and man.

Philalethes. The view you take reminds me seriously
of the mysteries of the ancients, which you mentioned
just now. Their fundamental purpose seems to have
been to remedy the evil arising from the differences
of intellectual capacity and education. The plan was,
out of the great multitude utterly impervious to
unveiled truth, to select certain persons who might
have it revealed to them up to a given point ; out of
these, again, to choose others to whom more would be
revealed, as being able to grasp more ; and so on up to
the Epopts. These grades corresponded to the little,
greater and greatest mysteries. The arrangement
was founded on a correct estimate of the intellectual
inequality of mankind.

Demopheles. To some extent the education in our
lower, middle and high schools corresponds to the
varying grades of initiation into the mysteries.

Philalethes. In a very approximate way ; and then

26 RELIGION :

only in so far as subjects of higher knowledge are
written about exclusively in Latin. But since that has
ceased to be the case all the mysteries are profaned.

Demopheles. However that may be, I wanted to
remind you that you should look at religion more from
the practical than from the theoretical side. Personi-
fied metaphysics may be the enemy of religion, but
all the same personified morality will be its friend.
Perhaps the metaphysical element in all religions is
false ; but the moral element in all is true. This
might perhaps be presumed from the fact that they
all disagree in their metaphysics, but are in accord as
regards morality.

Philalethes. Which is an illustration of the rule of
logic that false premises may give a true conclusion.

Demopheles. Let me hold you to your conclusion :
let me remind you that religion has two sides. If it
can't stand when looked at from its theoretical, that
is, its intellectual side ; on the other hand, from the
moral side it proves itself the only means of guiding,
controlling and mollifying those races of animals en-
dowed with reason, whose kinship with the ape does
not exclude a kinship with tiie tiger But at the
same time religion is, as a rule, a sufficient satisfaction
for their dull metaphysical necessities. You don't
seem to me to possess a proper idea of the difference,
wide as the heavens asunder, the deep gulf between
your man of learning and enlightenment, accustomed
to the process of thinking, and the heavy, clumsy,
dull and sluggish consciousness of humanity's beasts
of burden, whose thoughts have once and for all taken
the direction of anxiety about their livelihood, and

A DIALOGUE. 27

cannot be put in motion in ary other ; whose muscular
strength is so exclusively brought into play that the
nervous power, which makes intelligence, sinks to a
very low ebb. People like that must have something
tangible which they can lay hold of on the slippery
and thorny pathway of their life, some sort of beauti-
ful fable, by means of which things can be imparted
to them which their crude intelligence can entertain
only in picture and parable. Profound explanations
and fine distinctions are thrown away upon them. If
you conceive religion in this light, and recollect that
its aims are above all practical, and only in a
subordinate degree theoretical, it will appear to you
as something worthy of the highest respect.

Philalethes. A respect which will finally rest upon
the principle that the end sanctifies the means. I
don't feel in favour of a compromise on a basis like
that. Religion may be an excellent means of taming
and training the perverse, obtuse and ill-disposed
members of the biped race : in the eyes of the friend
of truth every fraud, even though it be a pious one, is
to be condemned. A system of deception, a pack of
lies, would be a strange means of inculcating virtue.
The flag to which I have taken the oath is truth : I
shall remain faithful to it everywhere, and whether I
succeed or not, I shall fight for light and truth ! If I
see religion on the wrong side —

Demopheles. But you won't. Religion isn't a de-
ception ; it is true and the most important of all
truths. Because its doct lines are, as I have said, of
such a lofty kind that the multitude can't grasp them
without an intermediary; because, I say, its light

28 RELIGION :

would blind the ordinary eye, it comes forward wrapt
in the veil of allegory and teaches, not indeed what is
exactly true in itself, but what is true in respect of
the lofty meaning contained in it ; and, understood in
this way, religion is the truth.

Philalethes. It would be all right if religion were
only at liberty to be true in a merely allegorical sense.
But its contention is that it is downright true in the
proper sense of the word. Herein lies the deception,
and it is here that the friend of truth must take up a
hostile position.

DeTYiopheles. This deception is a sine qua non. If
religion were to admit that it was only the allegorical
meaning in its doctrines which was true, it would rob
itself of all efficacy. Such rigorous treatment as
this would destroy its invaluable influence on the
hearts and morals of mankind. Instead of insisting
on that with pedantic obstinacy, look at its great
achievements in the practical sphere, its furtherance
of good and kindly feelings, its guidance in conduct,
the support and consolation it gives to suffering
humanity in life and death. How much you ought
to guard against letting theoretical cavils discredit in
the eyes of the multitude, and finally wrest from it,
something which is an inexhaustible source of conso-
lation and tranquillity, something which, in its hard
lot, it needs so much, even more than we do. On that
score alone religion should be free from attack.

Philalethes. With that kind of argument you could
have driven Luther from the field when he attacked
the sale of indulgences. How many a man got conso-
lation from the letters of indulgence, a consolation

A DIALOGUE. 29

which nothing else could give, a complete tranquillity;
so that he joyfully departed with the fullest confi-
dence in the packet of them which he held in his
hand at the hour of death, convinced that they were
so many cards of admission to all the nine heavens.
What is the use of grounds of consolation and tran-
quillity which are constantly overshadowed by the
Damocles-sword of illusion ? The truth, my dear
sir, is the only safe thing ; the truth alone remains
steadfast and trusty ; it is the only solid consolation ;
it is the indestructible diamond.

Demopheles. Yes, if you had truth in your pocket,
ready to favour us with it on demand. All you've
got are metaphysical systems, in which nothing is
certain but the headaches they cost. Before you take
anything away you must have something better to
put in its place.

Philalethes. That's what you keep on saying. To
free a man from error is to give, not to take away.
Knowledge that a thing is false is a truth. Error
always does harm : sooner or later it will bring mis-
chief to the man who harbours it. Then give up de-
ceiving people ; confess ignorance of what you don't
know, and leave everyone to form his own articles of
faith for himself. Perhaps they won't turn out so
bad, especially as they'll rub one another's corners
down, and mutually rectify mistakes. The existence
of many views will at any rate lay a foundation of
tolerance. Those who possess knowledge and capacity
may betake themselves to the study of philosophy, or
even in their own persons carry the history of philo-
sophy a step further.

30 RELIGION :

Demopheles. That'll be a pretty business ! A whole
nation of raw metaphysicians, wrangling and eventu-
ally coming to blows with one another !

Philalethes. Well, well, a few blows' here and there
are the sauce of life ; or at any rate a very incon-
siderable evil, compared with such things as priestly
dominion, plundering of the laity, persecution of
heretics, courts of inquisition, crusades, religious wars,
massacres of St. Bartholomew. These have been the
results of popular metaphysics imposed from without ;
so I stick to the old saying that you can't get grapes
from thistles, nor expect good to come from a pack of lies.

Demopheles. How often must I repeat that religion
is anything but a pack of lies ? It is truth itself, only
in a mythical, allegorical vesture. But when you
spoke of your plan of everyone being his own founder
of religion, I wanted to say that a particularism like
this is totally opposed to human nature, and would
consequently destroy all social order. Man is a meta-
physical animal, — that is to say, he has paramount
metaphysical necessities ; accordingly, he conceives
life above all in its metaphysical significance and
wishes to bring everything into line with that. Con-
sequently, however strange it may sound in view of
the uncertainty of all dogmas, agreement in the funda-
mentals of metaphysics is the chief thing; because a
genuine and lasting bond of union is only possible
among those who are of one opinion on these points.
As a result of this, the main point of likeness and of
contrast between nations is rather religion than
government, or even language ; aud so the fabric of
society, the State, will stand firm only when founded

A DIALOGUE. 31

on a system of metaphysics which is acknowledged by
all. This, of course, can only be a popular system, —
that is, a religion : it becomes part and parcel of the
constitution of the State, of all the public manifesta-
tions of the national life, and also of all solemn acts of
individuals. This was the case in ancient India,
among the Persians, Egyptians, Jews, Greeks and
Etonians: it is still the ease in the Brahman, Buddhist
and Mohammedan nations. In China there are three
faiths, it is true, of which the most prevalent —
Buddhism — is precisely the one which is not pro-
tected by the Siate : still, there is a saying in China,
universally acknowledged, and of daily application,
that " the three faiths are only one," — that is to s&y,
they agree in essentials. The Emperor confesses all
three together at the same time. And Europe is the
union of Christian States : Christianity is the basis of
everyone of the members, and the common bond of all.
Hence Turkey, though geographically in Europe, is
not properly to be reckoned as belonging to it. In
the same way, the European princes hold their place
" by the grace of God : " and the Pope is the vicegerent
of God. Accordingly, as his throne was the highest,
he used to wish all thrones to be regarded as held in
fee from him. In the same way, too, Archbishops
and Bishops, as such, possessed temporal power ; and
in England they still have seats and votes in the
Upper House. Protestant princes, as such, are heads
of their churches : in England, a few years ago, this
was a girl eighteen years old. By the revolt from the
Pope the Reformation shattered the European fabric,
and in a special degree dissolved the true unity of

32 RELIGION :

Germany by destroying its common religious faith.
This union, which had practically come to an end, had,
accordingly, to be restored later on by artificial and
purely political means. You see, then, how closely
connected a common faith is with the social order and
the constitution of every State. Faith is everywhere
the support of the laws and the constitution, the
foundation, therefore, of the social fabric, which could
hardly hold together at all if religion did not lend
weight to the authority of government and the dignity
of the ruler.

Philalethes. Oh, yes, princes use God as a kind of
bogey to frighten grown-up children to bed with, if
nothing else avails : that's why they attach so much
importance to the Deity. Very well. Let me, in
passing, recommend our rulers to give their serious
attention, regularly twice every year, to the fifteenth
chapter of the First Book of Samuel, that they may
be constantly reminded of what it means to prop the
throne on the altar. Besides, since the stake, that
ultima ratio theologorum, has gone out of fashion,
this method of government has lost its efficacy. For,
as you know, religions are like glow-worms ; they
shine only when it's dark. A certain amount of
general ignorance is the condition of all religions, the
element in which alone they can exist. But as soon
as astronomy, natural science, geology, history, the
knowledge of countries and peoples have spread their
light broadcast, and philosophy finally is permitted to
say a word, every faith founded on miracles and
revelation must disappear ; and philosophy takes its
place. In Europe the day of knowledge and science

A DIALOGUE. 33

dftwned towards the end of the fifteenth century with
the appearance of the Renaissance Platonists ; its
sun rose higher in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries so rich in results, and scattered the mists of
the Middle Age. Church and Faith were compelled
to disappear in the same proportion ; and so in the
eighteenth century English and French philosophers
were able to take up an attitude of direct hostility ;
until, finally, under Frederick the Great, Kant ap-
peared, and took away from religious belief the
support it had previously enjoyed from philosophy :
he emancipated the handmaid of theology, and in
attacking the question with German thoroughness
and patience, gave it an earnest instead of a frivolous
tone. The consequence of this is that we see Chris-
tianity undermined in the nineteenth century, a serious
faith in it almost completely gone ; we see it fighting
even for bare existence, whilst anxious princes try to
set it up a little by artificial means, as a doctor uses a
drug on a dying patient. In this connection there is
a passage in Condorcet's " Des Progres de l'esprit
humain," which looks as if written as a warning to
our age : " the religious zeal shown by philosophers
and great men was only a political devotion ; and
every religion which allows itself to be defended as a
belief that may usefully be left to the people, can only
hope for an agony more or less prolonged." In the
whole course of the events which I have indicated you
may alwa}Ts observe that faith and knowledge are
related as the two scales of a balance ; when the one
goes up the other goes down. So sensitive is the
balance that it indicates momentary influences. When,

34 RELIGION :

for instance, at the beginning of this century, those
inroads of French robbers under the leadership of
Buonaparte, and the enormous efforts necessary for
driving them out and punishing them, had brought
about a temporary neglect of science and consequently
a certain decline in the general increase of knowledge,
the Church immediately began to raise her head again
and Faith began to show fresh signs of life ; which, to
be sure, in keeping with the times, was partly poetical
in its nature. On the other hand, in the more than
thirty years of peace which followed, leisure and
prosperity furthered the building up of science and the
spread of knowledge in an extraordinary degree ; the
consequence of which is what I have indicated, the
dissolution and threatened fall of religion. Perhaps
the time is approaching which has so often been
prophesied, when religion will take her departure
from European humanity, like a nurse which the
child has out-grown : the child will now be given over
to the instructions of a tutor. For there is no doubt
that religious doctrines which are founded merely on
authority, miracles and revelations, are only suited to
the childhood of humanity. Everyone will admit
that a race, the past duration of which on the earth
all accounts, physical and historical, agree in placing
at not more than some hundred times the life of a
man of sixty, is as yet only in its first childhood.

Demopheles. Instead of taking an undisguised
pleasure in prophesying the downfall of Christianity,
how I wish you would consider what a measureless
debt of gratitude European humanity owes to it, how
greatly it has benefited by the religion which, after a

A DIALOGUE. 35

long interval, followed it from its old home in the
East. Europe received from Christianity ideas which
were quite new to it, the knowledge, I mean, of the
fundamental truth that life cannot be an end-in-itself,
that the true end of our existence lies beyond it. The
Greeks and Romans had placed this end altogether in
our present life, so that in this sense they may cer-
tainly be called blind heathens. In keeping with
this view of life, all their virtues can be reduced to
what is serviceable to the community, to what is use-
ful, in fact. Ai'istotle says quite naively, Those
virtues mast necessarily be the greatest which are the
most useful to others. So the ancients thought
patriotism the highest virtue, although it is really a
very doubtful one, since narrowness, prejudice, vanity
and an enlightened self-interest are main elements in
it. Just before the passage I quoted, Aristotle
enumerates all the virtues, in order to discuss them
singly. They are Justice, Courage, Temperance,
Magnificence, Magnanimity, Liberality, Gentleness,
Good Sense and Wisdom. How different from the
Christian virtues ! Plato himself, incomparably the
most transcendental philosopher of pre-Christian
antiquity, knows no higher virtue than Justice ; and
he alone recommends it unconditionally and for its
own sake, whereas the rest make a happy life, vita
beata, the aim of all virtue, and moral conduct the way
to attain it. Christianity freed European humanity
from this shallow, crude identification of itself with
the hollow uncertain existence of every day,

ccelumque tueri
Jussit, et erectos ad aidera tollere vulLus.

36 RELIGION :

Christianity, accordingly, does not preach mere Justice,
but the Love of Mankind, Compassion, Good Works,
Forgiveness, Love of your Enemies,]? alienee, Humility,
Resignation, Faith and Hope. It even went a step
further, and taught that the world is of evil, and that
we need deliverance. It preached dcspisal of the
world, self-denial, chastity, giving up of one's own will,
that is, turning away from life and its illusory
pleasures. It taught the healing power of pain : an
instrument of torture is the symbol of Christianity.
I am quite ready to admit that this earnest, this only
\ correct view of life was thousands of years previously
\ spread all over Asia in other forms, as it is still,
independently of Christianity ; but for European
humanity it was a new and great revelation. For it
is well known that the population of Europe consists
of Asiatic races driven out as wanderers from their
own homes, and gradually settling down in Europe ;
on their wanderings these races lost the original
religion of their homes, and with it the right view of
life : so, under a new sky, they formed religions for
themselves which were rather crude ; the worship of
Odin, for instance, the Druidic or the Greek religion,
the metaphysical content of which was little and
shallow. In the meantime the Greeks developed a
special, one might almost say, an instinctive sense of
beauty, belonging to them alone of all the nations who
have ever existed on the earth, peculiar, fine and ex-
act ; so that their mythology took, in the mouth of their
poets, and in the hands of their artists, an exceedingly
beautiful and pleasing shape. On the other hand, the
true and deep significance of life was lost to the

A DIALOGUE. 37

Greeks and Romans. They lived on like grown-up
children, till Christianity came and recalled them to the
serious side of existence.

Philalethes. And to see the effects you need only
compare antiquity with the Middle Age ; the time of
Pericles, say, with the fourteenth century. You
could scarcely believe you were dealing with the same
kind of beings. There, the finest development of
humanity, excellent institutions, wise laws, shrewdly
apportioned offices, rationally ordered freedom, all the
arts, including poetry and philosophy, at their best ;
the production of works which, after thousands of
years, are unparalleled, the creations, as it were, of a
higher order of beings, which we can never imitate :
life embellished by the noblest fellowship, as pour-
trayed in Xenophen's Banquet. Look on the other
picture, if you can; a time at which the Church had
enslaved the minds, and violence the bodies of men,
that knights and priests might lay the whole weight
of life upon the common beast of burden, the third
estate. There, you have might as right, Feudalism
and Fanaticism in close alliance, and in their train
abominable ignorance and darkness of mind, a
corresponding intolerance, discord of creeds, religious
wars, crusades, inquisitions and persecutions ; as the
form of fellowship, chivalry, compounded of savagery
and folly, with its pedantic system of ridiculous false
pretences carried to an extreme, its degrading super-
stition and apish veneration for women. Gallantry is
the residue of this veneration, deservedly requited as
it is by feminine arrogance ; it affords continual food
for laughter to all Asiatics, and the Greeks would

38 RELIGION :

have joined in it. In the golden Middle Age the
practice developed into a regular and methodical
service of women ; it imposed deeds of heroism,
cours d'amow, bombastic Troubadour songs, etc. ;
although it is to be observed that these last
buffooneries, which had an intellectual side, were
chiefly at home in France ; whereas amongst the
material sluggish Germans, the knights distinguished
themselves rather by drinking and stealing; they
were good at boozing and filling their castles with
plunder ; though in the courts, to be sure, there was
no lack of insipid love-songs. What caused this utter
transformation ? Migration and Christianity.

Demopheles. I am glad you reminded me of it.
Migration was the source of the evil ; Christianity
the dam on which it broke. It was chiefly by
Christianity that the raw, wild hordes which came
flooding in were controlled and tamed. The savage
man must first of all learn to kneel, to venerate, to
obey ; after that, he can be civilised. This was done
in Ireland by St. Patrick, in Germany by Winifried
the Saxon, who was a genuine Boniface. It was
migration of peoples, the last advance of Asiatic races
towards Europe, followed only by the fruitless at-
tempts of those under Attila, Genghis Khan, and
Timur, and as a comic afterpiece, by the gipsies, — it
was this movement which swept away the humanity
of the ancients. Christianity was precisely the prin-
ciple which set itself to work against this savagery ;
just as later, through the whole of the Middle Age,
the Church and its hierarchy were most necessary to
set limits to the savage barbarism of those masters of

A DIALOGUE. 30

violence, the princes and knights : it was what broke
up the ice-floes in that mighty deluge. Still, the
chief aim of Christianity is not so much to make this
life pleasant as to render us worthy of a better. It
looks away over this span of time, over this fleeting
dream, and seeks to lead us to eternal welfare. Its
tendency is ethical in the highest sense of the word,
a sense unknown in Europe till its advent ; as I have
shown you, by putting the morality and religion of
the ancients side by side with those of Christendom.

Philalethes. You are quite right as regards theory ;
but look at the practice ! In comparison with the
ages of Christianity the ancient world was unquestion-
ably less cruel than the Middle Age, with its deaths
by exquisite torture, its innumerable burnings at the
stake. The ancients, further, were very enduring,
laid great stress on justice, frequently sacrificed them-
selves for their country, showed such traces of every
kind of magnanimity, and such genuine manliness, that
to this day an acquaintance with their thoughts and
actions is called the study of Humanity. The fruits
of Christianity were religious wars, butcheries, cru-
sades, inquisitions, extermination of the natives in
America, and the introduction of African slaves in
their place ; and among the ancients there is nothing
analogous to this, nothing that can be compared with
it ; for the slaves of the ancients, the familia, the
vernce, were a contented race, and faithfully devoted
to their masters' service, and as different from the
miserable negroes of the sugar plantations, which are
a disgrace to humanity, as their two colours are dis-
tinct. Those special moral delinquencies for which

40 RELIGION :

we reproach the ancients, and which are perhaps less
uncommon now-a-days than appears on the surface to
be the case, are trifles compared with the Christian
enormities I have mentioned. Can you then, all con-
sidered, maintain that mankind has been really made
morally better by Christianity ?

Demopheles. If the results haven't everywhere been
in keeping with the purity and truth of the doctrine,
it may be because the doctrine has been too noble,
too elevated for mankind, that its aim has been placed
too high. It was so much easier to come up to the
heathen system, or to the Mohammedan. It is pre-
cisely what is noble and dignified that is most liable
everywhere to misuse and fraud: abusus optimi pessi-
mus. Those high doctrines have accordingly now and
then served as a pretext for the most abominable pro-
ceedings, and for acts of unmitigated wickedness. The
downfall of the institutions of the old world, as well
as of its arts and sciences, is, as I have said, to be
attributed to the inroad of foreign barbarians. The
inevitable result of this inroad was that ignorance and
savagery got the upper hand ; consequently violence
and knavery established their dominion, and knights
und priests became a burden to mankind. It is partly,
however, to be explained by the fact that the new
religion made eternal and not temporal welfare the
object of desire, taught that simplicity of heart was
to be preferred to knowledge, and looked askance at
all worldly pleasure. Now the arts and sciences sub-
serve worldly pleasure ; but in so far as they could be
made serviceable to religion they were promoted, and
attained a certain degree of perfection.

A DIALOGUE. 41

Philalethes. In a very narrow sphere. The sciences
were suspicious companions, and as such were placed
under restrictions : on the other hand darling ignor-
ance, that element so necessary to a system of faith,
was carefully nourished.

Demopheles. And yet mankind's possessions in the
way of knowledge up to that period, which were pre-
served in the writings of the ancients, were saved from
destruction by the clergy, especially by those in the
monasteries. How would it Lave fared if Christianity
hadn't come in just before the migration of peoples ?

Philalethes. It would really be a most useful inquiry
to try and make, with the coldest impartiality, an
unprejudiced, careful and accurate comparison of the
advantages and disadvantages which may be put down
to religion. For that, of course, a much larger know-
ledge of historical and psychological data than either
of us command would be necessary. Academies might
make it a subject for a prize essay.

Demopheles. They'll take good care not to do so.

Philalethes. I'm surprised to hear you say that ; it's
a bad look out for religion. However, there are aca-
demies which, in proposing a subject for competition,
make it a secret condition that the prize is to go to
the man who best interprets their own view If we
could only begin by getting a statistician to tell us
how many crimes are prevented every year by re-
ligious, and how many by other motives, there would
be very few of the former. If a man feels tempted
to commit a crime, you may rely upon it that the
first consideration which enters his head is the [»en- .y**^
alty appointed for it, and the chances that it will fall

42 RELIGION :

upon him ; then comes, as a second consideration, the
risk to his reputation. If I am not mistaken, he will
ruminate by the hour on these two impediments, be-
fore he ever takes a thought of religious considera-
tions. If he gets safely over those two first bulwarks
against crime, I think religion alone will very rarely
hold him back from it.

Demopheles. I think that it will very often do so,
especially when its influence works through the
medium of custom. An atrocious act is at once felt
to be repulsive. What is this but the effect of early
impressions ? Think, for instance, how often a man,
especially if of noble birth, will make tremendous
sacrifices to perform what he has promised, motived
entirely by the fact that his father has often earnestly
impressed upon him in his childhood that " a man of
honour " or "a gentleman " or "a cavalier" always keeps
his word inviolate.

Pkilalethes. That's no use unless there is a certain
>sjnborn honourableness. You mustn't ascribe to re-
S ligion what results from innate goodness of character,
* by which compassion for the man who would suffer
by the crime keeps a man from committing it. This
is the genuine moral motive, and as such it is inde-
pendent of all religions.

Demopheles. But this is a motive which rarely
affects the multitude unless it assumes a religious
aspect. The religious aspect at any rate strengthens
its power for good. Yet without any such natural
foundation religious motives alone are powerful to
prevent crime. We need not be surprised at this in
the case of the multitude, whm we see that even

A DIALOGUE. 43

people of education pass now and then under the
influence, not indeed of religious motives, which are
founded on something which is at least allegorically
true, but of the most absurd superstition, and allow
themselves to be guided by it all their life long ; as,
for instance, undertaking nothing on a Friday, refus-
ing to sit down thirteen at table, obeying chance
omens, and the like. How much more likely is the
multitude to be guided by such things. You can't
form any adequate idea of the narrow limits of the
mind in its raw state ; it is a place of absolute dark-
ness, especially when, as often happens, a bad, unjust,
and malicious heart is at the bottom of it. People in
this condition — and they form the great bulk of
humanity — must be led and controlled as well as may
be, even if it be by really superstitious motives ; until
such time as they become susceptible to truer and
better ones. As an instance of the direct working of
religion, may be cited the fact, common enough, in
Italy especially, of a thief restoring stolen goods,
through the influence of his confessor, who says he
won't absolve him if he doesn't. Think again of the
case of an oath, where religion shows a most decided
influence ; whether it be that a man places himself
expressly in the position of a purely Trior al being, and
as such looks upon himself as solemnly appealed to,
as seems to be the case in France, where the formula
is simply je le jure, and also among the Quakers,
whose solemn yea or nay is regarded as a substitute
for the oath ; or whether it be that a man really
believes he is pronouncing' something which may
affect his eternal happiness, — a belief which is pre-

44 RELIGION :

sumably only the investiture of the former feeling.
At any rate, religious considerations are a means oi
awaking and calling out a man's moral nature. How
often it happens that a man agrees to take a false
oath,, and then, when it comes to the point, suddenly
refuses, and truth and right win the day.

Philalethes. Oftener still false oaths are really
taken, and truth and right trampled under foot,
though all witnesses of the oath know it well ! Still
you are quite right to quote the oath as an undeniable
example of the practical efficacy of religion. But, in
spite of all you've said, I doubt whether the efficacy
of religion goes much beyond this. Just think ; if a
public proclamation were suddenly made, announcing
the repeal of all the criminal laws, I fancy neither
you nor I would have the courage to go home from
here under the protection of religious motives. If, in
the same way, all religions were declared untrue, we
could, under the protection of the laws alone, go on
living as before, without any special addition to our
apprehensions or our measures of precaution. I will
go beyond this, and say that religions have very fre-
quently exercised a decidedly demoralising influence.
One may say generali}7 that duties towards God and
duties towards humanity are in inverse ratio. It is
easy to let adulation of the Deity make amends for
lack of proper behaviour towards man. And so we
see that in all times and in all countries the great
majority oi mankind find it much easier to beg their
wa}' to heaven by prayers than to deserve to go there
by their actions. In every religion it soon comes to
be the case that faith, ceremonies, rites and the liko

A DIALOGUE. 45

are proclaimed to be more agreeable to the Divine will
than moral actions ; the former, especially if they are
bound up with the emoluments of the clergy, gradually
come to be looked upon as a substitute for the latter.
Sacrifices in temples, the saying of masses, the found-
ing of chapels, the planting of crosses by the road
side, soon come to be the most meritorious works, so
that even great crimes are expiated by them, as also
by penance, subjection to priestly authority, con-
fessions, pilgrimages, donations to the temples and the
clergy, the building of monasteries and the like. The
consequence of all this is that the priests finally appear
as middlemen in the corruption of the gods. And if
matters don't go quite so far as that, where is the
religion whose adherents don't consider prayers, praise
and manifold acts of devotion, a substitute, at least in
part, for moral conduct ? Look at England, where by
an audacious piece of priestcraft, the Christian Sunday,
introduced by Constantine the Great as a substitute
for the Jewish Sabbath, is in a mendacious way iden-
tified with it, and takes its name, — and this in order
that the commands of Jehovah for the Sabbath, (that
is, the day on which the Almighty had to rest from
his six days' labour, so that it is essentially the last
day of the week), might be applied to the Christian
Sunday, the dies soils, the first day of the week which
the sun opens in glory, the day of devotion and joy.
The consequence of this fraud is that " Sabbath-
breaking," or " the desecration of the Sabbath," that is,
the slightest occupation, whether of business or
pleasure, all games, music, sewing, worldly books, are
on Sundays looked upon as great sins. Surely the

46 RELIGION :

ordinary man must believe that if, as his spiritual
guides impress upon him, he is only constant in " a
strict observance of the holy Sabbath," and " a regular
attendance on Divine Service," that is, if he only in-
variably idles away his time on Sundays and doesn't
fail to sit two hours in church to hear the same litany
for the thousandth time and mutter it in tune with the
others, he may reckon on indulgence in regard to those
little peccadilloes which he occasionally allows him-
self. Those devils in human form, the slave owners
and slave traders in the Free States of North America
(they should be called the Slave States) are, as a rule,
orthodox, pious Anglicans who would consider it a
grave sin to work on Sundays ; and in confidence in
this, and their regular attendance at church, they hope
for eternal happiness. The demoralising tendency of
religion is less problematical than its moral influence.
How great and how certain that moral influence must
be to make amends for the enormities which religions,
especially the Christian and Mohammedan religions,
have produced and spread over the earth ! Think of
the fanaticism, the endless persecutions, the religious
wars, that sanguinary frenzy of which the ancients
had no conception ! think of the crusades, a butchery
lasting two hundred years and inexcusable, its war-
cry "It is the will of God," its object to gain
possession of the grave of one who preached love and
sufferance ! think of the cruel expulsion and exter-
mination of the Moors and Jews from Spain ! think
of the orgies of blood, the inquisitions, the heretical
tribunals, the bloody and terrible conquests of the
Mohammedans in three continents, or those of Chris-

A DIALOGUE. 47

tianity in America, whose inhabitants were for the most
part, and in Cuba entirely, exterminated. According
to Las Casas, Christianity murdered twelve millions
in forty years, of course all in majorem Dei gloriam.
and for the propagation of the Gospel, and because
what wasn't Christian wasn't even looked upon as
human ! I have, it is true, touched upon these matters
before ; but when in our day, we hear of " Latest
News from the Kingdom of God,"* we shall not be
wear}' of bringing old news to mind. Above all,
don't let us forget India, the cradle of the human race,
or at least of that part of it to which we belong, where
first Mohammedans, and then Christians, were most
cruelly infuriated against the adherents of the origi-
nal faith of mankind. The destruction or disfigure-
ment of the ancient temples and idols, a lamentable,
mischievous and barbarous act, still bears witness to
the monotheistic fury of the Mohammedans, carried
on from Marmud the Ghaznevid of cursed memory
down to Aureng Zeb the fratricide, whom the
Portuguese Christians have zealously imitated by
destruction of temples and the auto da fe of the
inquisition at Goa. Don't let us forget the chosen
people of God, who after they had, by Jehovah's ex-
press command, stolen from their old and trusty
friends in Egypt the gold and silver vessels which
had been lent to them, made a murderous and plunder-
ing inroad into " the Promised Land," with the
murderer Moses at their head, to tear it from the
rightful owners, again by the same Jehovah's express

* A missionary periodical, the fortieth annual number 0/
which appeared in 1856.

48 RELIGION :

and repeated commands, showing no mercy, extermi-
nating the inhabitants, women, children and all,
(Joshua, ch. 9 and 10) — and all this, simply because
they weren't circumcised and didn't know Jehovah,
which was reason enough to justify every enormity
against them ; just as for the same reason, in earlier
times, the infamous knavery of the patriarch Jacob and
his chosen people against Hamor, King of Shalem, and
his people, is reported to his glory because the people
were unbelievers ! (Genesis xxxiii. 18.) Truly, it is
the worst side of religions that the believers of one
religion have allowed themselves every sin against
those of another, and with the utmost ruffianism and
cruelty persecuted them ; the Mohammedans against
the Christians and Hindoos ; the Christians against
the Hindoos, Mohammedans, American natives, Ne-
groes, Jews, heretics, and others.

Perhaps I go too far in saying all religions. For

the sake of truth, I must add that the fanatical

enormities perpetrated in the name of religion are

only to be put down to the adherents of monotheistic

creeds, that is, the Jewish faith and its two branches,

Christianity and Islamism. We hear of nothing of

/the kind in the case of Hindoos and Buddhists.

m Although it is a matter of common knowledge that

'about the fifth century of our era Buddhism was

driven out by the Brahmans from its ancient home in

the southernmost part of the Indian peninsula, and

afterwards spread over the whole of the rest of Asia,

as far as I know, we have no definite account of any

crimes of violence, or wars, or cruelties, perpetrated in

the course of \K That may, of course, be attributable

A DIALOGUE. 40

to the obscurity which veils the history of those
countries ; but the exceedingly mild character of their
religion, together with their unceasing inculcation of
forbearance towards all living things, and the fact
that Brahmanism by its caste system properly admits
no proselytes, allows one to hope that their adherents
may be acquitted of shedding of blood on a large scale,
and of cruelty in any form. Spence Hardy, in his
excellent book on Eastern Monachisrn., praises the ex-
traordinary tolerance of the Buddhists, and adds his
assurance that the annals of Buddhism will furnish
fewer instances of religious persecution than those of
any other religion. As a matter of fact, it is only to
monotheism that intolerance is essential ; an only
god is by his nature a jealous god, who can allow no
other god to exist Polytheistic gods, on the other
hand, are naturally tolerant ; they live and let live ;
their own colleagues are the chief objects of their
sufferance, as being gods of the same religion. This
toleration is afterwards extended to foreign gods, who
are, accordingly, hospitably received, and later on ad-
mitted, in some cases, to an equality of rights; the
chief example of which is shown by the fact that the
Romans willingly admitted and venerated Phrygian,
Egyptian and other gods. Hence it is that mono-
theistic religions alone furnish the spectacle of
religious wars, religious persecutions, heretical tri-
bunals, that breaking of idols and destruction of
images of the gods, that razing of Indian temples, and
Egyptian colossi, which had looked on the sun three
thousand years : just because a jealous god had said,
Thou shalt make no graven image.

50 RELIGION :

But to return to the chief point. You are certainly
right in insisting on the strong metaphysical needs of
mankind; but religion appears to me to be not so
much a satisfaction as an abuse of those needs. At
any rate we have seen that in regard to the further-
ance of morality, its utility is, for the most part,
problematical, its disadvantages, and especially the
atrocities which have followed in its train, patent to
the light of day. Of course it is quite a different
matter if we consider the utility of religion as a prop
of thrones ; for where these are held " by the grace of
God," throne and altar are intimately associated ; and
every wise prince who loves his throne and his family
will appear at the head of his people as an exemplai
of true religion. Even Machiavelli, in the eighteenth
chapter of his book, most earnestly recommended
religion to princes. Beyond this one may say that
revealed religions stand to philosophy exactly in the
relation of "sovereigns by the grace of God," to
" the sovereignty of the people ; " so that the two
former terms of the parallel are in natural alliance.

Demopheles. Oh, don't take that tone ! You're
going hand in hand with ochlocracy and anarchy, the
arch-enemy of all legislative order, all civilisation and
all humanity.

Philalethes. You are right. It was only a sophism
of mine, what the fencing master calls a feint. I
retract it. But see how disputing sometimes makes
an honest man unjust and malicious. Let us stop.

Demopheles. I can't help regretting that, after all
the trouble I've taken, I haven't altered your dis-
position in regard to religion. On the other hand, I

A DIALOGUE. 51

can assure you that everything yon have said hasn't
shaken ray conviction of its high value and necessity.
Philalethes. I believe you ; for as we read in
Hudibras —

" He that complies against his will
Is of his own opinion still."

My consolation is that, alike in controversies and in
taking mineral waters, the after effects are the true
ones.

Demopheles. Well, I hope it'll be beneficial in your
case.

Philalethes. It might be so, if I could digest a
certain Spanish proverb.

Demopheles. Which is ?

Philalethes. Behind the cross stands the devil.

Demopheles. Come, don't let us part with sarcasms.
Let us rather admit that religion, like Janus, or better
still, like the Brahman god of death, Yama, has two
faces, and like him, one friendly, the other sullen.
Each of us has kept his eyes fixed on one alone.

Philalethes. You are right, old fellow 1

A
FEW WORDS ON PANTHEISM.

A FEW WORDS ON PANTHEISM.

The controversy between Theism and Pantheism
might be presented in an allegorical or dramatic form
by supposing a dialogue between two persons in the
pit of a theatre at Milan during the performance of a
piece. One of them, convinced that he is in Girolamo's
renowned marionette-theatre, admires the art by
which the director prepares the dolls and guides their
movements. " Oh, you are quite mistaken," says the
other, " we're in the Teatro deUa Scala ; it is the
manager and his troop who are on the stage ; they are
the persons you see before you ; the poet too is tak-
ing a part."

The chief objection I have to Pantheism is that it
says nothing. To call the world "God" is not to
explain it ; it is only to enrich our language with a
superfluous synonym for the word " world." It comes
to the same thing whether you say "the world is
God," or " God is the world." But if you start from
" God " as something that is given in experience and
has to be explained, and then say, " God is the
world," you are affording what is to some extent an
explanation, in so far as you are reducing what is
unknown to what is partly known (ignotum per
notius) ; but it is only a verbal explanation. If,
however, you start from what is really given, that is

56 A FEW WORDS ON PANTHEISM.

to say, from the world, and say, " the world is God,"
it is clear that you say nothing, or at least you are
explaining what is unknown by what is more un-
known

Hence Pantheism presupposes Theism ; only in so
far as you start from a god, that is, in so far as you
possess him as something with which you are already
familiar, can you end by identifying him with the
world ; and your purpose in doing so is to put him
out of the way in a decent fashion. In other words,
you do not start clear from the world as something
that requires explanation ; you start from God as
something that is given, and not knowing what to do
with him, you make the world take over his role.
This is the origin of Pantheism. Taking an un-
prejudiced view of the world as it is, no one would
dream of regarding it as a god. It must be a very
ill-advised god who knows no better way of diverting
himself than by burning into such a world as ours,
such a mean, shabby world, there to take the form of
innumerable millions who live indeed, but are fretted
and tormented, and who manage to exist a while
together only by preying on one another ; to bear
misery, need and death, without measure and without
object, in the form, for instance, of millions of negro
slaves, or of the three million weavers in Europe who,
in hunger and care, lead a miserable existence in
damp rooms or the cheerless halls of a factory. What
a pastime this for a god, who must, as such, be used
to another mode of existence !

We find accordingly that what is described as the
great advance from Theism to Pantheism, if looked

A FEW WORDS ON PANTHEISM. 57

at seriously, and not simply as a masked negation of
the sort indicated above, is a transition from what is
unproved and hardly conceivable to what is absolutely
absurd. For however obscure, however loose or con-
fused may be the idea which we connect with the
word " God," there are two predicates which are
inseparable from it, the highest power and the highest
wisdom. It is absolutely absurd to think that a being
endowed with these qualities should have put him-
self into the position described above. Theism, on
the other hand, is something which is merely un-
proved ; and if it is difficult to look upon the infinite
world as the work of a personal, and therefore in-
dividual, Being, the like of which we know only from
our experience of the animal world, it is nevertheless
not an absolutely absurd idea. That a Being, at once
almighty and all-good, should create a world of tor-
ment is always conceivable,, even though we do not
know why he does so; and accordingly we find that
when people ascribe the height of goodness to this
Being, they set up the inscrutable nature of his
wisdom as the refuge by which the doctrine escapes
the charge of absurdity. Pantheism, however, assumes
that the creative God is himself the world of in-
finite torment, and, in this little world alone, dies
every second, and that entirely of his own will ; which
is absurd. It would be much more correct to identify
the world with the devil, as the venerable author of
the Deutsche Theologie has in fact done in a passage
of his immortal work, where he says, " Wherefore the
evil spirit and nature are one, and where nature is not
overcome, neither is the evil adversary overcome."

58 A FEW WORDS ON PANTHEISM.

It is manifest that the Pantheists give the Sansara
the name of God. The same name is given by the
mystics to the Nirvana. The latter, however, state
more about the Nirvana than they know, which is not
done by the Buddhists, whose Nirvana is accordingly
a relative nothing. It is only Jews, Christians, and
Mohammedans who give its proper and correct mean-
ing to the word " God."

The expression, often heard now-a-days, " the world
is an end-in-itself," leaves it uncertain whether Pan-
theism or a simple Fatalism is to be taken as the ex-
planation of it. But, whichever it be, the expression
looks upon the world from a physical point of view
only, and leaves out of sight its moral significance,
because you cannot assume a moral significance with-
out presenting the world as means to a higher end.
The notion that the world has a physical but not a
moral meaning is the most mischievous error sprung
from the greatest mental perversity.

ON BOOKS AND READING.

ON BOOKS AND READING.

Ignorance is degrading only when found in company
with riches. The poor man is restrained by poverty
and need : labour occupies his thoughts, and takes the
place of knowledge. But rich men who are ignorant
live for their lusts only, and are like the beasts of the
field,' as may be seen every day ; and they can also
be reproached for not having used wealth and leisure
for that which gives them their greatest value.

When we read, another person thinks for us : we
merely repeat his mental process. In learning to
write the pupil goes over with his pen what the
teacher has outlined in pencil; so in reading, the
greater part of the work of thought is already done
for us. This is why it relieves us to take up a book
after being occupied with our own thoughts. And in
reading, the mind is, in fact, only the playground of
another's thoughts. So it comes about that if anyone
spends almost the whole day in reading, and by way
of relaxation devotes the intervals to some thoughtless
pastime, he gradually loses the capacity for thinking;
just as the man who always rides at last forgets how
to walk. This is the case with many learned persons :
they have read themselves stupid. For to occupy
every spire moment in reading, and to do nothing but
read, is even more paralysing to the mind than con-

62 ON BOOKS AND READING.

stant manual labour, which at least allows those en-
gaged in it to follow their own thoughts. A spring
never free from the pressure of some foreign body at
last loses its elasticity : and so does the mind if other
people's thoughts are constantly forced upon it. Just
as you can ruin the stomach and impair the whole
body by taking too much nourishment, so you can
overfill and choke the mind by feeding it too much.
The more you read, the fewer are the traces left by what
you have read : the mind becomes like a tablet crossed
over and over with writing. There is no time for
ruminating, and in no other way can you assimilate
what you have read. If you read on and on without
setting your own thoughts to work, what you have
read can not strike root, and is generally lost. It is, in
fact, just the same with mental as with bodily food :
hardly the fifth part of whatonetakes is assimilated. The
rest passes off in evaporation, respiration, and the like.
The result of all this is that thoughts put on paper
are nothing more than footsteps in the sand : you see
the way the man has gone, but to know what he saw
on his walk you need his eyes.

There is no quality of style that can be gained by
reading writers who possess it ; whether it be
persuasiveness, imagination, the gift of drawing com-
parisons, boldness, bitterness, brevity, grace, ease of
expression or wit, unexpected contrasts, a laconic or
naive manner, and the like. But if these qualities
are already in us, exist, that is to say, potentially, we
can call them forth and bring them to consciousness ;
we can learn the purposes to which they can be put ;

ON BOOKS AND HEADING. 63

we can be strengthened in our inclination to use them,
or get courage to do so ; we can judge by examples
the effect of applying them, and so acquire the correct
use of them ; and of course it is only when we have
arrived at that point that we actually possess these
qualities. The only way in which reading can form
style is by teaching us the use to which we can put
our own natural gifts. We must have these gifts
before we begin to learn the use of them. Without
them reading teaches us nothing but cold, dead
mannerisms and makes us shallow imitators.

The strata of the earth preserve in rows the
creatures which lived in former ages ; and the array
of books on the shelves of a library stores up in like
manner the errors of the past and the way in which
they have been exposed. Like those creatures, they
too were full of life in their time, and made a great
deal of noise; but now they are stiff and fossilized, and an
object of curiosity to the literary palaeontologist alone.

Herodotus relates that Xerxes wept at the sight
of his army, which stretched further than the eye
could reach, in the thought that of all these, after a -, &,
hundred years, not one would be alive. And in look- ,VC/^
ing over a huge catalogue of new books, one might
weep at thinking that, when ten years have passed,
not one of them will be heard of.

It is in literature as in life : wherever you turn, you
stumble at once upon the incorrigible mob of humanity,
swarming in all directions, crowding and soiling

64 ON BOOKS AND READING.

everything, like flies in summer. Hence the number
which no man can count of bad books, tho-e rank
weeds of literature, which draw nourishment from the
corn and choke it. The time, money and attention of
the public, which rightfully belong to good books
and their noble aims, they take for themselves : they
are written for the mere purpose of making money or
procuring places. So they are not only useless ; they
do positive mischief. Nine tenths of the whole of
our present literature has no other aim than to get a
few shillings out of the pockets of the public ; and to
this end author, publisher and reviewer are in league.
Let me mention a crafty and wicked trick, albeit a
profitable and successful one, practised by litterateurs,
hack writers and voluminous authors. In complete
disregard of good taste and the true culture of the period,
they have succeeded in getting the whole of the world
of fashion into leading strings, so that they are all
trained to read in time, and all the same thing, viz.
the newest books ; and that for the purpose of getting
food for conversation in the circles in which they move.
This is the aim served by bad novels, produced by
writers who were once celebrated, as Spindler, Bulwer
Lyttoii, Eugene Sue. What can be more miserable than
the lot of a reading puolic like this, always bound to
peruse the latest works of extremely commonplace
persons who write for money only, and who are
therefore never few in number ? and for this advan-
tage they are content to know by name only the
works of the few superior minds of all ages and all
countries. Literary newspapers, too, are a singularly
cunning device for robbing the reading public of the

ON BOOKS AND READING. 65

time which, if culture is to be attained, should be
devoted to the genuine productions of literature,
instead of being occupied by the daily bungling of
commonplace persons.

Hence, in regard to reading, it is a very important
thing to be able to refrain. Skill in doing so consists
in not taking into one's hands any book merely be-
cause at the time it happens to be extensively read ;
such as political or religious pamphlets, novels, poetry,
and the like, which make a noise, and may even attain
to several editions in the first and last year of their
existence. Consider, rather, that the man who writes
for fools is always sure of a large audience ; be
careful to limit your time for reading, and devote
it exclusively to the works of those great minds of all
times and countries, who o'ertop the rest of humanity,
those whom the voice of fame points to as such.
These alone really educate and instruct. You can
never read bad literature too little, nor good literature
too much. Bad books are intellectual poison; they
destroy the mind. Because people always read what
is new instead of the best of all ages, writers remain
in the narrow circle of the ideas which happen to
prevail in their time ; and so the period sinks deeper
and deeper into its own mire.

There are at all times two literatures in progress,
running side by side, but little known to each other ;
the one real, the other only apparent. The former
grows into permanent literature ; it is pursued by
those who live for science or poetry ; its course is
sober and quiet, but extremely slow ; and it produces

66 ON BOOKS AND READING.

in Europe scarcely a dozen works in a century; these
however, are permanent. The other kind is pursued
by persons who live on science or poetry ; it goes at a
gallop, with much noise and shouting of partisans ;
and every twelvemonth puts a thousand works on
the market. But after a few years one asks, Where
are they ? where is the glory which came so soon and
made so much clamour ? This kind may be called
fleeting, and the other, permanent literature.

In the history of politics, half a century is always
a considerable time ; the matter which goes to form
them i^ ever on the move ; there is always something
going on. But in the history of literature there is
often a complete standstill for the same period ; no-
thing has happened, for clumsy attempts don't count.
You are just where you were fifty years previously.

To explain what I mean, let me compare the ad-
vance of knowledge among mankind to the course
taken by a planet. The false paths on which
humanity usually enters after every important ad-
vance are like the epicycles in the Ptolemaic system,
and after passing through one of them, the world is
iust where it was before it entered it. But the great
minds, who really bring the race further on its course,
do not accompany it on the epicycles it makes from
time to time. This explains why posthumous fame is
often bought at the expense of contemporary praise,
and vice versa. An instance of such an epicycle is the
philosophy started by Fichte and Schelling, and
crowned by Hegel's caricature of it. This epicycle
was a deviation from the limit to which philosophy

ON BOOKS AND READING. 67

had been ultimately brought by Kant ; and at that
point I took it up again afterwards, to carry it further.
In the intervening period the sham philosophers I
have mentioned and some others went through their
epicycle, which has just come to an end; so that those
who went with them on their course are conscious of
the fact that they are exactly at the point from which
they started.

This circumstance explains why it is that, every
thirty years or so, science, literature and art, as ex-
pressed in the spirit of the age are declared bank-
rupt. The errors which appear from time to time
mount to such a height in that period that the mere
weight of their absurdity makes the fabric fall ;
whilst the opposition to them has been gathering force
at the same time. So an upset takes place, often fol-
lowed by an error in the opposite direction. To ex-
hibit these movements in their periodical return would
be the true practical aim of the history of literature :
little attention, however, is paid to it. And besides,
the comparatively short duration of these periods
makes it difficult to collect the data of epochs long
gone by, so that it is most convenient to observe how
the matter stands in one's own generation. An instance
of this tendency, drawn from physical science, is sup-
plied in the Neptunian geology of Werter. But let
me keep to the example cited above, the nearest we
can take. In German philosophy, the brilliant epoch
of Kant was immediately followed by a period which
aimed rather at being imposing than at convincing.
Instead of being thorough and clear, it tried to be
dazzling, hyperbolical, and, in a special degree, unin-

68 ON BOOKS AND READING.

telligible: instead of seeking truth, it intrigued.
Philosophy could make no progress in this fashion ;
and at last the whole school and its method became
bankrupt. For the effrontery of Hegel and his fellows
came to such a pass, — whether because they talked
such sophisticated nonsense, or were so unscrupulously
puffed, or because the entire aim of this pretty piece
of work was quite obvious, — that in the end there
was nothing to prevent the charlatanry of the whole
business from becoming manifest to everybody ; and
when, in consequence of certain disclosures, the favour
it had enjoyed in high quarters was withdrawn, the
system was openly ridiculed. This most miserable of
all the meagre philosophies that have ever existed
came to grief, and dragged down with it into the abysm
of discredit the systems of Fichte and Schelling which
had preceded it. And so, as far as Germany is con-
cerned, the total philosophical incompetence of the first
half of the century following upon Kant is quite plain,-
and still the Germans boast of their talent for philoso-
phy in comparison with foreigners, especially since an
English writer has been so maliciously ironical as to
call them " a nation of thinkers."

For an example of the general system of epicycles
drawn from the history of art, look at the school of
sculpture which flourished in the last century and took
its name from Bernini, more especially at the develop-
ment of it which prevailed in France. The ideal of
this school was not antique beauty, but commonplace
nature ; instead of the simplicity and grace of ancient
art, it represented the manners of a French minuet.
This tendency became bankrupt when, under Winckel-

ON BOOKS AND READING. 69

mann's direction, a return was made to the antique
school. The history of painting furnishes an illustra-
tion in the first quarter of the century, when art was
looked upon merely as a means and instrument of
mediaeval religious sentiment, and its themes conse-
quently drawn from ecclesiastical subjects alone ;
these, however, were treated by painters who had none
of the true earnestness of faith, and in their delusion
they followed Francesco Francia, Pietro Perugino,
Angelico da Fiesole and others like them, rating them
higher even than the really great masters who followed.
It was in view of this error, and because in poetry an
analogous aim had at the same time found favour, that
Goethe wrote his parable Pfaffenspiel. This school,
too, got the reputation of being whimsical, became
bankrupt, and was followed by a return to nature,
which proclaimed itself in genre pictures and scenes of
life of every kind, and likewise now and then strayed
into what was vulgar.

The progress of the human mind in literature is
similar. The history of literature is for the most part
like the catalogue of a museum of deformities ; the
spirit in which they keep best is pigskin. The few
creatures that have been born in goodly shape need
not be looked for there. They are still alive, and are
everywhere to be met with in the world, immortal,
and with their years ever green. They alone form
what I have called real literature ; the history of
which, poor as it is in persons, we learn from our youth
up out of the mouths of all educated people, before
compilations recount it for us.

As an antidote to the prevailing monomania for

70 ON BOOKS AND READING.

reading literary histories, in order to be able to chatter
about everything, without having any real knowledge
at all, let me refer to a passage in Li chtenberg's works,
(vol. II. p. 302), which is well worth perusal.

I believe that the over-minute acquaintance with the history
of science and learning, which is such a prevalent feature of our
day, is very prejudicial to the advance of knowledge itself.
There is pleasure in following up this history ; but, as a matter
of fact, it leaves the mind, not empty indeed, but without any
power of its own, just because it makes it so full. Whoever has
felt the desire, not to fill up his mind, but to strengthen it, to
develope his faculties and aptitudes, and generally, to enlarge
his powers, will have found that there is nothing so weakening as
intercourse with a so-called litterateur, on a matter of knowledge
on which he has not thought at all, though he knows a thousand
little facts appertaining to its histoiy and literature. It is like
reading a cookery-book when you are hungry. I believe that
so-called literary history will never thrive amongst thoughtful
people, who are conscious of their own worth and the worth of
real knowledge. These people are more given to employing
their own reason than to troubling themselves to know how
others have employed theirs. The worst of it is that, as you will
find, the more knowledge takes the direction of literary re-
search, the less the power of promoting knowledge becomes ; the
only thing that increases is pride in the possession of it. Such
persons believe that they possess knowledge in a greater degree
than those who really possess it. It is surely a well-founded re-
mark, that knowledge never makes its possessor proud. Those
alone let themselves be blown out with pride, who, incapable of ex-
tending knowledge in their own persons, occupy themselves with
clearing up dark points in its history, or are able to recount
what others have done. They are proud, because they consider
this occupation, which is mostly of a mechanical nature, the
practice of knowledge. I could illustrate what I mean by
examples, but it would be an odious task.

Yet I wish some one would attempt a tragical

ON BOOKS AND READING. 71

history of literature, giving the way in which the
writers and artists, who form the proudest possession
of the various nations which have given them birth,
have been treated by them during their lives. Such
a history would exhibit the ceaseless^ warfare, which
what was good and genuine in all times and countries
has had to wage with what was bad and perverse. It
would tell of the martyrdom of almost all those who
truly enlightened humanity, of almost all the great
masters of every kind of art ; it would show us how,
with few exceptions, they were tormented to death,
without recognition, without sympathy, without
followers ; how they lived in poverty and misery,
whilst fame, honour, and riches, were the lot of the
unworthy ; how their fate was that of Esau, who,
while he was hunting and getting venison for his
father, was robbed of the blessing by Jacob, disguised
in his brother's clothes ; how, in spite of all, they were
kept up by the love of their work, until at last the
bitter fight of the teacher of humanity is over, until
the immortal laurel is held out to him, and the
hour strikes when it can be said :

Der schwere Panzer w ird zum Flügelkleide
Kurz ist der Schmerz, unendlich ist die Freude.

ON PHYSIOGNOMY

PHYSIOGNOMY.

That the outer man is a picture of the inner, and the
face an expression and revelation of the whole char-
acter, is a presumption likely enough in itself, and
therefore a safe one to go by ; borne out as it is by
the fact that people are always anxious to see anyone
who has made himself famous by good or evil, or as
the author of some extraordinary work ; or if they
cannot get a sight of him to hear at any rate from
others what he looks like. So people go to places
where they may expect to see the person who interests
them ; the press, especially in England, endeavours to
give a minute and striking description of his appear-
ance ; painters and engravers lose no time in putting
him visibly before us ; and finally photography, on
that veiy account of such high value, affords the most
complete satisfaction of our curiosity. It is also a
fact that in private life everyone criticises the phy-
siognomy of those he comes across, first of all secretly
trying to discern their intellectual and moral char-
acter from their features. This would be a useless
pi*oceeding if, as some foolish people fancy, the ex-
terior of a man is a matter of no account ; if, as they
think, the soul is one thing and the body another, and
the body related to the soul merely as the coat to the
man himself.

76 PHYSIOGNOMY.

On the contrary, every human face is a hierogly-
phic, and a hieroglyphic, too, which admits of being
deciphered, the alphabet of which we carry about
with us already perfected. As a matter of fact, the
face of a man gives us fuller and more interesting in-
formation than his tongue ; for his face is the com-
pendium of all he will ever say, as it is the one record
of all his thoughts and endeavours. And, moreover,
the tongue tells the thought of one man only, whereas
the face expresses a thought of nature itself ; so that
everyone is worth attentive observation, even though
everyone may not be worth talking to. And if every
individual is worth observation as a single thought of
nature, how much more so is beauty, since it is a
higher and more general conception of nature, is, in
fact, her thought of a species. This is why beaut}7 is
so captivating : it is a fundamental thought of
nature, whereas the individual is only a by-thought,
a corollary.

In private, people always proceed upon the prin-
ciple that a man is what he looks ; and the principle
is a right one, only the difficulty lies in its application.
. f , For though the art of applying the principle is partly
/ l innate and may be partly gained by experience, no
rJp one is a master of it, and even the most experienced
is not infallible. But for all that, whatever Figaro
may say, it is not the face which deceives ; it is we who
deceive ourselves in reading in it what is not there.

The deciphering of a face is certainly a great and
difficult art, and the principles of it can never be
learnt in the abstract. The first condition of success
is to maintain a purely objective point of view, which

PHYSIOGNOMY. 77

is no easy matter. For, as soon as the faintest trace
of anything subjective is present, whether dislike or
favour, or fear or hope, or even the thought of the im-
pression we ourselves are making upon the object of
our attention, the characters we are trying to decipher
become confused and corrupt. The sound of a lan-
guage is really appreciated only by one who does not
understand it, and that because, in thinking of the
signification of a word, we pay no regard to the sign
itself. So, in the same way, a physiognomy is correctly
gauged only by one to whom it is still strange, who
has not grown accustomed to the face by constantly
meeting and conversing with the man himself. It is,
therefore, strictly speaking, only the first sight of a
man which affords that purely objective view which
is necessary for deciphering his features. An odour
affects us only when we first come in contact with it,
and the first glass of a wine is the one which gives us
its true taste ; in the same way, it is only at the first
encounter that a face makes its full impression upon
us. Consequently the first impression should be care-
fully attended to and noted, even written down if the
subject of it is of personal importance, provided, of
course, that one can trust one's own sense of phy-
siognomy. Subsequent acquaintance and intercourse
will obliterate the impression, but time will one day
prove whether it is true.

Let us, however, not conceal from ourselves the
fact that this first impression is for the most part
extremely unedifying. How poor most faces are !
With the exception of those that are beautiful, good-
uatured, or intellectual, that is to say, the very few

78 PHYSIOGNOMY.

and far between, I believe a person of any fine feeling
scarcely ever sees a new face without a sensation akin
to a shock, for the reason that it presents a new and
surprising combination of unedifying elements. To
tell the truth, it is, as a rule, a sorry sight. There
are some people whose faces bear the stamp of such
artless vulgarity and baseness of character, such an
animal limitation of intelligence, that one wonders
how they can appear in public with such a counten-
ance, instead of wearing a mask. There are faces,
indeed, the very sight of which produces a feeling of
pollution. One cannot therefore take it amiss of
people, whose privileged position admits of it, if they
manage to live in retirement and completely free from
the painful sensation of " seeing n- w faces." The
metaphysical explanation of this circumstance rests
upon the consideration that the individuality of a man
is precisely that by the very existence of which he
should be reclaimed and corrected. If, on the other
hand, a psychological explanation is satisfactory, let
any one ask himself what kind of plrysiognomy he
may expect in those who have all their life long,
except on the rarest occasions, harboured nothing but
petty, base and miserable thoughts, and vulgar, selfish,
envious, wicked and malicious desires. Every one of
these thoughts and desires has set its mark upon the
face during the time it lasted, and by constant re-
petition, all these marks have in course of time become
furrows and blotches, so to speak. Consequently,
most people's appearance is such as to produce a shock
at first sight ; and it is only gradually that one gets
accustomed to it, that is to say, becomes so deadened

PHYSIOGNOMY. 79

to the impression that it has no more effect on
one.

But that the prevailing facial expression is the
result of a long process of innumerable, fleeting and
characteristic contractions of the features is just the
reason why intellectual countenances are of gradual
formation. It is indeed only in old age that intel-
lectual men attain their sublime expression, whilst
portraits of them in their youth show only the first
traces of it. Yet on the other hand, what I have just
said about the shock which the first sight of a face
generally produces is in keeping with the remark
that it is only at that first sight that it makes its true
and full impression. For to get a purely objective
and uncorrupted impression of it we must stand in
no kind of relation to the person ; if possible, we
must not yet have spoken with him. For every con-
versation places us to some extent upon a friendly
footing, establishes a certain rapport, a mutual sub-
jective relation, which is at once unfavourable to an
objective point of view. Since every one's endeavour
is to win esteem or friendship for himself the man
who is under observation will at once employ all those
arts of dissimulation in which he is already versed,
and corrupt us with his airs, hypocrisies and
flatteries ; so that what the first look clearly showed
will soon be seen by us no more.

This fact is at the bottom of the saying that " most
people gain by further acquaintance ; " it ought, how-
ever, to run, " delude us by it." It is only when, later
on, the bad qualities manifest themselves that our
first judgment as a rule receives its justification and

vX

80 PHYSIOGNOMY.

makes good its scornful verdict. It may be that " a
further acquaintance " is an unfriendly one, and if
that is so we do not find in this case either that
people gain by it. Another reason why people
apparently gain on a nearer acquaintance is that the
man whose first aspect warns us from him, shows as
soon as we converse with him, no longer only his own
being and character but also his education ; that is, not
only what he really is by nature but also what he has
appropriated to himself out of the common wealth of
mankind. Three-fourths of what he says belongs not
to him, but to the sources from which he obtained it ;
so that we are often surprised to hear a minotaur
speak so humanly. If we make a still closer
acquaintance, the animal nature, of which his face
gave promise, will manifest itself "in all its splendour."
If one is gifted with an acute sense for physiognomy,
one should take special note of those verdicts which
preceded a closer acquaintance and were therefore
genuine. For the face of a man is the exact ex-
pression of what he is ; and if he deceives us, that is
our fault, not his. What a man says, on the othei
hand, is what he thinks, more often what he has
learned, or it may be even, what he pretends to think.
And besides this, when we talk to him, or even hear
him talking to others, we pay no attention to his
physiognomy proper. It is the underlying substance,
the fundamental datum, and we disregard it ; what
interests us is its pathognomy, its play of feature
during conversation. This, however, is so arranged
as to turn the good side upwards.

When Socrates said to a young man who was in-

PHYSIOGNOMY. 81

troduced to him to have his capabilities tested,
" Talk in order that I may see you," if indeed by
" seeing " he did not simply mean " hearing," he was
right, so far as it is only in conversation that the
features and especially the eyes become animated, and
the intellectual resources and capacities set their mark
upon the countenance. This puts us in a position to
form a provisional notion of the degree and capacity
of intelligence ; which was in that case Socrates' aim.
But in this connection it is to be observed, firstly, that
the rule does not apply to moral qualities, which lie
deeper ; and in the second place, that what from an
objective point of view we gain by the clearer develop-
ment of the countenance in conversation, we lose from
a subjective standpoint on account of the personal
relation into which the speaker at once enters in re-
gard to us, and which produces a slight fascination, so
that, as explained above, we are not left impartial
observers. Consequently from the last point of view
we might say with greater accuracy, " Do not speak
in order that I may see you."

For to get a pure and fundamental conception of a
man's physiognomy we must observe him when he is
alone and left to himself. Society of any kind and
conversation throw a reflection upon him which is not
his own, generally to his advantage ; as he is thereby
placed in a state of action and re-action which sets
him off. But alone and left to himself, plunged in
the depths of his own thoughts and sensations, he is
wholly himself, and a penetrating eye for physiognomy
can at one glance take a general view of his entire
character. For his face, looked at by and in itself, ex-

82 PHYSIOGNOMY.

presses the keynote of all his thoughts and en-
deavours, the arret irrevocable, the irrevocable decree
of his destiny, the consciousness of which only comes
to him when he is alone.

The study of physiognomy is one of the chief means
of a knowledge of mankind, because the cast of a
man's face is the only sphere in which his arts of
dissimulation are of no avail, since these arts extend
only to that play of feature which is akin to mimicry.
So that is why I recommend such a study to be
undertaken when the subject of it is alone and given
up to his own thoughts, and before he is spoken to :
and this partly for the reason that it is only in such a
condition that inspection of the physiognomy pure and
simple is possible, because conversation at once lets in
a pathognomical element, in which a man can apply
the arts of dissimulation which he has learned : partly
again because personal contact, even of the very
slightest kind, gives a certain bias and so corrupts the
judgment of the observer.

Again, in regard to the study of physiognomy in
general, it is further to be observed that intellectual
capacity is much easier of discernment than moral
character. The former naturally takes a much more
ourward direction, and expresses itself not only in the
face and the play of feature, but also in the gait, down
even to the very slightest movement. One could per-
haps discriminate from behind between a blockhead,
a fool and a man of genius. The blockhead would be
discerned by the torpidity and sluggishness of all his
movements : folly sets its mark upon every gesture,
and so does intellect and a studious nature. Hence

PHYSIOGNOMY. 83

that remark of La Bruyere that there is nothing so
slight, so simple or imperceptible but that our way of
doing it enters in and betrays us : a fool neither comes
nor goes, nor sits down, nor gets up, nor holds his
tongue, nor moves about in the same way as an in-
telligent man. (And this is, be it observed by way of
parenthesis, the explanation of that sure and certain
instinct which, according to Helvetius, ordinary folk
possess of discerning people of genius, and of getting
out of their way.)

The chief reason for this is that, the larger and more
developed the brain, and the thinner, in relation to it,
the spine and nerves, the greater is the intellect ; and
not the intellect alone, but at the same time the
mobility and pliancy of all the limbs ; because the
brain controls them more immediately and resolutely ;
so that everything hangs more upon a single thread,
every movement of which gives a precise expression
to its purpose. This is analogous to, nay, is immedi-
ately connected with the fact that the higher an
animal stands in the scale of development, the easier
it becomes to kill it by wounding a single spot. Take,
for example, batrachia : they are slow, cumbrous and
sluggish in their movements ; they are unintelligent,
and, at the same time, extremely tenacious of life ;
the reason of which is that with a very small brain,
their spine and nerves are very thick. Now gait and
movement of the arms are mainly functions of the
brain ; our limbs receive their motion and every little'
modification of it from the brain through the medium
of the spine. This is why conscious movements
fatigue us ; the sensation of fatigue, like that of pain,

84 PHYSIOGNOMY.

has its seat in the brain, not, as people commonly
suppose, in the limbs themselves ; hence motion in-
duces sleep. On the other hand those motions which
are not excited by the brain, that is, the unconscious
movements of organic life, of the heart, of the lungs,
etc., go on in their course without producing fatigue.
Since thought equally with motion is a function of
the brain, the character of the brain's activity is
expressed equally in both, according to the constitu-
tion of the individual ; stupid people move like lay-
figures, while every joint of an intelligent man is
eloquent. But gesture and movement are not nearly
so good an index of intellectual qua1'- Lies as the face,
the shape and size of the brain, the contraction and
movement of the features, and above all the eye, — from
the small, dull, dead-looking eye of a pig up through
all gradations to the irradiating, flashing eyes of a
genius. The look of good sense and prudence, even
of the best kind, differs from that of genius, in that
the former bears the stamp of subjection to the will,
while the latter is free from it. Accordingly one
can well believe the anecdote told by Squarzafichi in
his life of Petrarch, and taken from Joseph Brivius, a
contemporary of the poet, how once at the court of the
Visconti, when Petrarch and other noblemen and
gentlemen were present, Galeazzo Visconti told his
son, who was then a mere boy (he was afterwards
first Duke of Milan), to pick out the wisest of the
company ; how the boy looked at them all for a little,
and then took Petrarch by the hand and led him up
to his father, to the great admiration of all present.
For so clearly does nature set the mark of her dignity

PHYSIOGNOMY. 85

on the privileged among mankind that even a child
can discern it. Therefore I should advise my sagaci-
ous countrymen, if ever again they wish to trumpet
about for thirty years a very commonplace person as
a great genius, not to choose for the purpose such
a beerhousekeeper - physiognomy as was possessed
by that philosopher upon whose face nature had
written, in her clearest characters, the familiar inscrip-
tion, " commonplace person."

But what applies to intellectual capacity will not
apply to moral qualities, to character. It is more
difficult to discern its physiognomy, because, being of
a metaphysical nature, it lies incomparably deeper. It
is true that moral character is also connected with
the constitution, with the organism, but not so im-
mediately or in such direct connection with definite
parts of its system as is intellectual capacity. Hence
while everyone makes a show of his intelligence and
endeavours to exhibit it at every opportunity, as
something with which he is in general quite con-
tented, few expose their moral qualities freely, and
most people intentionally cover them up ; and long
practice makes the concealment perfect. In the mean-
time, as I explained above, wicked thoughts and
worthless efforts gradually set their mark upon the
face, especially the eyes. So that, judging by phy-
siognomy, it is easy to warrant that a given man will
never produce an immortal work; but not that he will
never commit a great crime.

PSYCHOLOGICAL
OBSERVATIONS.

PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS.

For every animal, and more especially for man, a
certain conformity and proportion between the will
and the intellect is necessary for existing or making
any progress in the world. The more precise and
correct the proportion which nature establishes, the
more easy, safe and agreeable will be the passage
through the world. Still, if the right point is only
approximately reached, it will be enough to ward off
destruction. There aie, then, certain limits within
which the said proportion may vary, and yet preserve
a correct standard of conformity. The normal
standard is as follows. The object of the intellect is
to light and lead the will on its path, and therefore,
the greater the force, impetus and passion, which spurs
on the will from within, the more complete and
luminous must be the intellect which is attached to it,
that the vehement strife of the will, the glow of
passion, and the intensity of the emotions, may not
lead man astray, or urge him on to ill considered,
false or ruinous action ; this will, inevitably, be the
result, if the will is very violent and the intellect very
weak. On the other hand, a phlegmatic character, a
weak and languid will, can get on and hold its own
with a small amount of intellect ; what is naturally
moderate needs only moderate supyiort. The general

90 PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS.

tendency of a want of proportion between the will
and the intellect, in other words, of any variation from
the normal proportion I have mentioned, is to produce
unhappiness, whether it be that the will is greater
than the intellect, or the intellect greater than the will.
Especially is this the case when the intellect is de-
veloped to an abnormal degree of strength and superi-
ority, so as to be out of all proportion to the will, a
condition which is the essence of real genius ; the in-
tellect is then not only more than enough for the
needs and aims of life, it is absolutely prejudicial to
them. The result is that, in yonth, excessive energy
in grasping the objective world, accompanied by a
vivid imagination and a total lack of experience,
makes the mind susceptible, and an easy prey to ex-
travagant ideas, nay, even to chimseras ; and this
issues in an eccentric and phantastic character. And
when, in later years, this state of mind yields and
passes away under the teaching of experience, still the
genius never feels himself at home in the common
world of every day and the ordinary business of life ;
he will never take his place in it, and accommodate
himself to it as accurately as the person of normal
intellect ; he will be much more likely to make curious
mistakes. For the ordinary mind feels itself so com-
pletely at home in the narrow circle of its ideas and
views of the world that no one can get the better of
it in that sphere ; its faculties remain true to their
original purpose, viz., to promote the service of the
will ; it devotes itself steadfastly to this end, and
abjures extravagant aims. The genius, on the other
hand, is at bottom a monstrum per excessum : jast as.

PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS. 91

conversely, the passionate, violent and unintelligent
man, the brainless barbarian, is a monstrum per de-
fectum.

• • • •

The xoill to live, which forms the inmost core of
every Hving being, exhibits itself most conspicuously
in the higher order of animals, that is, the cleverer
ones; and so in them the nature of the will may be
seen and examined most clearly. For in the lower
orders its activity is not so evident ; it has a lower
degree of objectivation ; whereas, in the class which
stands above the higher order of animals, that is, in
men, reason enters in ; and with reason comes discre-
tion, and with discretion, the capacity for dissimula-
tion, which throws a veil over the operations of the
will. In mankind, consequently, the will appears
without its mask only in the affections and the
passions. Just this is the reason why passion, when
it speaks, always wins credence, no matter what the
passion may be ; and rightly so. For the same
reason the passions are the main theme of poets and
the stalking horse of actors. The conspicuousness of
the will in the lower order of animals explains the de-
light we take in dogs, apes, cats, etc.; it is the entirely
naive way in which they express themselves that
gives us so much pleasure.

The sight of any free animal going about its business
undisturbed, seeking its food, or looking after its
young, or mixing in the company of its kind, all the
time being exactly what it ought to be and can be, —
what a strange pleasure it gives us ! Even if it is
only a bird, I can watch it for a long time with de-

92 PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS.

light ; or a water rat or a hedgehog ; or better still, a
weasel, a deer, or a stag. The main reason why we
take so much pleasure in looking at animals is that we
like to see our own nature in such a simplified form.
There is only one mendacious being in the world, and
that is man. Every other is true and sincere, and
makes no attempt to conceal what it is, expressing its
feelings just as they are.

* * • *

Many things are put down to the force of habit
which are rather to be attributed to the constancy
and immutability of original, innate character, accord-
ing to which under like circumstances we always do
the same thing : whether it happens for the first or
the hundredth time, it is in virtue of the same necessity.
Real force of habit, as a matter of fact, rests upon that
indolent, passive disposition which seeks to relieve the
intellect and the will of a fresh choice, and so makes
us do what we did yesterday and have done a hundred
times before, and of which we know that it will attain
its object.

But the truth of the matter lies deeper, and a more
precise explanation of it can be given than appears at
first sight. Bodies whicli may be moved by mechanical
means only are subject to the power of inertia ; and
applied to bodies which may be acted on by motives,
this power becomes the force of habit. The actions
which we perform by mere habit come about, in fact,
without any individual separate motive brought into
play for the particular case; hence, in performing them,
we really do not think about them. A motive was pre-
sent onlv on the first few occasions on which the action

PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS. 93

happened which has since become a habit ; the sec-
ondary after-effect of this motive is the present habit,
and it is sufficient to enable the action to continue ;
just as when a body has been set in motion by a push,
it requires no more pushing in order to continue its
motion ; it will go on to all eternity, if it meets with
no friction. It is the same in thecase of animals:
training is a habit which is forced upon them. The
horse goes on drawing his cart quite contentedly, with-
out having to be urged on ; the motion is the continued
effect of those strokes of the whip which urged him on
at first ; by the law of inertia they have become per-
petuated as habit. All this is really more than a mere
parable : it vis the underlying identity of the will at
very different degrees of its objectivation, in virtue of
which the same law of motion takes such different

forms.

• ♦ * *

Viv^muchos afios is the ordinary greeting in Spain,
and all over the earth it is quite customary to wish
people a long life. It is presumably not a knowledge
of life which directs such a wish ; it is rather know-
ledge of what man is in his inmost nature, the will to live.

The wish which everyone has that he may be
remembered after his death, — a wish which rises to
the longing for posthumous glory in the case of those
whose aims are high, — seems to me to spring from this
clinging to life. When the time comes which cuts a
man off from every possibility of real existence, he
strives after a life which is still attainable, even
though it be a shadowy and ideal one.

* * • •

94 PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS.

The deep grief we feel at the loss of a friend arises
from the feeling that in every individual there is
something which no words can express, something
which is peculiarly his own and therefore irreparable.
Omne Individuum ineffabile.

* * » *

We may come to look upon the death of our enemies
and adversaries, even long after it has occurred, with
just as much regret as we feel for that of our friends,
viz., when we miss them as witnesses of our brilliant
success.

* • * *

That the sudden announcement of a very happy
event may easily prove fatal rests upon the fact that
happiness and misery depend merely on the proportion
which our claims bear to what we get. Accordingly,
the good things we possess, or are certain of getting,
are not felt to be such ; because all pleasure is in fact
of a negative nature and effects the relief of pain,
while pain or evil is what is really positive ; it is the
object of immediate sensation. With the possession
or certain expectation of good things our demand
rises, and increases our capacity for further possession
and larger expectations. But if we are depressed by
continual misfortune, and our claims reduced to a
minimum, the sudden advent of happiness finds no
capacity for enjoying it. Neutralised by an absence
of pre-existing claims, its effects are apparently
positive, and so its whole force is brought into play ;
hence it may possibly break our feelings, i.e., be fatal
to them. And so, as is well known, one must be care-
ful in announcing great happiness. First, one must

PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS. 95

get the person to hope for it, then open up the pros-
pect of it, then communicate part of it, and at last
make it fully known. Every portion of the good
news loses its efficacy, because it is anticipated by a
demand, and room is left for an increase in it. In
view of all this it may be said that our stomach for
good fortune is bottomless, but the entrance to it is
narrow. These remarks are not applicable to great
misfortunes in the same way. They are more seldom
fatal, because hope always sets itself against them.
That an analogous part is not played by fear in the
case of happiness results from the fact that we are
instinctively more inclined to hope than to fear ; just
as our eyes turn of themselves towards light rather
than darkness.

* * * *

Hope is the result of confusing the desire that
something should take place with the probability that
it will. Perhaps no man is free from this folly of the
heart, which deranges the intellect's correct apprecia-
tion of probability to such an extent that, if the
chances are a thousand to one against it, yet the
event is thought a likely one. Still in spite of this a
sudden misfortune is like a death-stroke, whilst a hope
that is always disappointed and still never dies, is
like death by prolonged torture. \

He who has lost all hope has also lost all fear ; this
is the meaning of the expression " desperate." It is
natural to a man to believe what he wishes to be
true, and to believe it because he wishes it. If this
characteristic of our nature, at once beneficial and
assuaging, is rooted out by many hard blows of fate,

9G PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS.

and a man comes, conversely, to a condition in which
he believes a thing must happen because he does not
wish it, and what he wishes to happen can never be,
just because he wishes it, this is in reality the state
described as " desperation."

* * • *

That we are so often deceived in others is not
because our judgment is at fault, but because nr
general, as Bacon says, intellectus luminis sicci non
est, sed recipit infusionem a voluntate et affectibus :
that is to say, trifles unconsciously bias us for or
against a person from the very beginning. It may
also be explained by our not abiding by the qualities
which we really discover ; we go on to conclude the
presence of others which we think inseparable from
them, or the absence of those which we consider
incompatible. For instance, when we perceive
generosity, we infer justice ; from piety, we infer
honesty ; from lying, deception ; from deception,
stealing, etc; a procedure which opens the door to
many false views, partly because human nature is so
strange, partly because our stand-point is so one- ..
sided. It is true, indeed, that character always forms
a consistent and connected whole ; but the roots of
all its qualities lie too deep to allow of our concluding
from particular data in a given case whether certain
qualities can or cannot exist together.

* * * *

We often happen to say things that may in some
way or other be prejudicial to us ; but we keep
silent about things that might make us look ridiculous ;

PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS. 97

because in this case effect follows very quickly on
cause.

♦ * * *

The pain of an unfulfilled wish is small in compari-
son with that of repentance ; for the one stands in
the presence of the vast open future, whilst the other
has the irrevocable past closed behind it.

* * * *
Geduld, patientia, patience, especially the Spanish

sufrimiento, is strongly connected with the notion of
suffering. It is therefore a passive state, just as the
opposite is an active state of the mind, with which,
when great, patience is incompatible. It is the innate
virtue of phlegmatic, indolent, and spiritless people,
as also of women. But that it is nevertheless so very
useful and necessary is a sign that the world is very
badly constituted.

* * * •

Money is human happiness in the abstract : he,
then, who is no longer capable of enjoying human
happiness in the concrete, devotes his heart entirely

to money.

* * * *

Obstinacy is the result of the will forcing itself
into the place of the intellect.

* * * *

If you want to find out your real opinion of any-
one, observe the impression made upon you by the
first sight of a letter from him.

* * * *

The course of our individual life and the events in
it, as far as their true meaning and connection is

98 PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS.

concerned, may be compared to a piece of rough mosaic.
So long as you stand close in front of it, you cannot get
a right view of the objects presented, nor perceive
their significance or beauty. Both come in sight only
when you stand a little way off. And in the same
way you often understand the true connection of im-
portant events in your life not while they are going on
nor soon after they are past, but only a considerable
time afterwards.

Is this so, because we require the magnifying effect
of imagination ? or because we can get a general view
only from a distance ? or because the school of experi-
ence makes our judgment ripe ? Perhaps all of these
together : but it is certain that we often view in the
right light the actions of others, and occasionally even
our own, only after the lapse of years. And as it is
in one's own life so it is in history.

* * * *

Happy circumstances in life are like certain groups
of trees. Seen from a distance they look very well :
but go up to them and amongst them, and the beauty
vanishes ; you don't know where it can be ; it is only
trees you see. Hence it is that we often envy the
lot of others.

* * * *

The doctor sees all the weakness of mankind, the
lawyer all the wickedness, the theologian all the
stupidity.

* * * *

A person of phlegmatic disposition who is a block-
head, would, with a sanguine nature, be a fool.

PSYCHOLOGICAL, OBSERVATIONS. 99

Now and then one learns something, but one forgets
the whole day long.

Moreover our memory is like a sieve, the holes of
which in time get larger and larger : the older we
get, the quicker anything entrusted to it slips from
the memory, whereas, what was fixed fast in it in
early days is there still. The memory of an old man
gets clearer and clearer, the further it goes back, and
less clear the nearer it approaches the present time ;
so that his memory, like his eyes, becomes long-sighted.
* * * *

In the process of learning you may be apprehen-
sive about bewildering and confusing the memory,
but not about overloading it, in the strict sense of the
word. The faculty for remembering is not diminished
in proportion to what one has learnt, just as little as
the number of moulds in which you cast sand, lessens
its capacity for being cast in new moulds. In this
sense the memory is bottomless. And yet the greater
and more various anyone's knowledge, the longer he
takes to find out anything that may suddenly be
asked him ; because he is like a shopkeeper who has
to get the article wanted from a large and multifari-
ous store ; or, more strictly speaking, because out of
many possible trains of thought he has to recall
exactly that one which, as a result of previous train-
ing, leads to the matter in question. For the memory
is not a repository of things you wish to preserve, but
a mere dexterity of the intellectual powers ; hence
the mind always contains its sum of knowledge only
potentially, never actually.

It sometimes happens that my memory will not

100 PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS.

reproduce some word in a foreign language, or a name«
or some artistic expression, although I know it very
well. After I have bothered myself in vain about it
for a longer or a shorter time, I give up thinking
about it altogether. An hour or two afterwards, in
rare cases even later still, sometimes only after four
or five weeks, the word I was trying to recall occurs to
me while I am thinking of something else, as suddenly
as if some one had whispered it to me. After noticing
this phenomenon with wonder for very many years, I
have come to think that the probable explanation of
it is as follows. After the troublesome and unsuccess-
ful search, my will retains its craving to know the
word, and so sets a watch for it in the intellect. Later
on, in the course and play of thought, some
word by chance occurs having the same initial letters
or some other resemblance to the word which is
sought; then the sentinel springs forward and supplies
what is wanting to make up the word, seizes it, and
suddenly brings it up in triumph, without my knowing
where and how he got it ; so it seems as if some one
had whispered it to me. It is the same process as
that adopted by a teacher towards a child who cannot
repeat a word ; the teacher just suggests the first
letter of the word, or even the second too ; then the
child remembers it. In default of this process, you
can end by going methodically through all the letters
of the alphabet.

• • • *

In the -ordinary man injustice rouses a passionate
desire for vengeance ; and it has often been said that
vengeance is sweet. How many sacrifices have been

PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS. 101

made just to enjoy the feeling of vengeance, without
any intention of causing an amount of injury equiva-
lent to what one has suffered. The bitter death of
the centaur Nessus was sweetened by the certainty
that he had used his last moments to work out an
extremely clever vengeance. Walter Scott expresses
the same human inclination in language as true as it
is strong : " Vengeance is the sweetest morsel to the
mouth that ever was cooked in hell ! " I shall now
attempt a psychological explanation of it.

Suffering which falls to our lot in the course of
nature, or by chance, or fate, does not, ceteris paribus,
seem so painful as suffering which is inflicted on us
by the arbitrary will of another. This is because we
look upon nature and chance as the fundamental
masters of the world ; we see that the blow we re-
ceived from them might just as well have fallen on
another. In the case of suffering which springs from
this source we bewail the common lot of humanity
rather than our own misfortune. But that it is the
arbitrary will of another which inflicts the suffering,
is a peculiarly bitter addition to the pain or injury it
causes, viz., the consciousness that some one else is
superior to us, whether by force or cunning, while we
lie helpless. If amends are possible, amends heal the
injur}'-; but that bitter addition, "and it was you who
did that to me," which is often more painful than the
injury itself, is only to be neutralised by vengeance.
By inflicting injury on the one who has injured us,
whether we do it by force or cunning, is to show our
superiority to him, and to annul the proof of his
superiority to us. That gives our hearts the satis-

102 PSYOHOTOCICAL OBSERVATIONS.

faction towards which it yearns. So where there is a
great deal of pride or vanity, there also will there be
a great desire of vengeance. But as the fulfilment of
every wish brings with it more or less of a sense of
disappointment, so it is with vengeance. The delight
we hope to get from it is mostly embittered by com-
passion. Vengeance taken will often tear the heart
and torment the conscience: the motive to it is no
longer active, and what remains is the evidence of our
malice.

THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM,

THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM.

When the Church says that, in the dogmas of
religion, reason is totally incompetent and blind, and
its use to be reprehended, this really attests the fact
that these dogmas are allegorical in their nature,
and are not to be judged by the standard which
reason, taking all things sensv proprio, can alone
apply. Now the absurdities of a dogma are just the»
mark and sign of what is allegorical and mythical in
it. In the case under consideration, however, the
absurdities spring from the fact that two such hetero-
geneous doctrines as those of the Old and New Testa-
ments had to be combined The great allegory was
of gradual growth. Suggested by external and
adventitious circumstances, it was developed by the
interpretation put upon them, an interpretation in
quiet touch with certain deep-lying truths only half
realised. The allegory was finally completed by
Augustine, who penetrated deepest into its meaning,
and so was able to conceive it as a systematic whole
and supply its defects. Hence the Augustinian doc-
trine, confirmed by Luther, is the complete form of
Christianity; and the Protestants of to-day, who take
Revelation sensu proprio and confine it to a single
individual, are in error in looking upon the first
beginnings of Christianity as its most perfect ex-

J

106 THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM.

*£,

pression. But the bad thing about all religions is
that, instead of being able to confess their allegorical
nature, they have to conceal it ; accordingly, the}'-
parade their doctrines in all seriousness as true sensu
proprio, and as absurdities form an essential part of
these doctrines we have the great mischief of a con-
tinual fraud. Nay, what is worse, the day arrives
when they are no longer .true sensu ~pwprio, and then
there is an end of them ; ' so that, in that respect, it
would be better to admit their allegorical nature at
once. But the difficulty is to teach the multitude that
something can be both true and untrue at the same
time. Since all religions are in a greater or less
degree of this nature, we must recognise the fact that
mankind cannot get on without a certain amount of
absurdity, that absurdity is an element in its existence,
and illusion indispensable; as indeed other aspects of
life testify.

I have said that the combination of the Old I
Testament with the New gives rise to absurdities.
Among the examples which illustrate what I mean, I
may cite the Christian doctrine of Predestination and
Grace, as formulated by Augustine and adopted from^
him by Luther Y according to which one man is
endowed with grace and another is not. Grace, then,
comes to be a privilege received at birth and brought
ready into the world ; a privilege, too, in a matter
second to none in importance. What is obnoxious
and absurd in this doctrine may be traced to the idea
contained in the Old Testament, that man is the
creation of an external will, which called him into
existence out of nothing. It is quite true that

THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM. 107

genuine moral excellence Is really innate ; but the
meaning of the Christian doctrine is expressed in
another and more rational way by the theory of
metempsychosis, common to Brahmans and Buddhists.
According to this theory, the qualities which distin-
guish one man from another are received at birth are
brought, that is to say, from another world and a
former life ; these qualities are not an external gift
of grace, but are the fruits of the acts committed
in that other world. But Augustine's dogma of Pre-
destination is connected with another dogma, namely,
that the mass of humanity is corrupt and doomed to
eternal damnation, that very few will be found
righteous and attain salvation, and that only in
consequence of the gift of grace, and because they
are predestined to be saved ; whilst the remainder will
be overwhelmed by the perdition they have deserved,
viz., eternal torment in hell. Taken in its ordinary
meanings the dogma is revolting, for it comes to this:
it condemns a man, who may be, perhaps, scarcely
twenty years of age, to expiate his errors, or even his
unbelief, in everlasting torment ; nay, more, it makes
this almost universal damnation the natural effect of
original sin and therefore the necessary consequence
of the Fall. This is a result which must have been
foreseen by him who made mankind, and who, in the
first place, made them not better than they are, and
secondly set a trap for them into which he must have
known they would fall ; for he made the whole
world, and nothing is hidden from him. According
to this doctrine, then, God created out of nothing a
weak race prone to sin, in order to give them over to

108 THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM.

endless torment. And, as a last characteristic, we are
told that this God, who prescribes forbearance and
forgiveness of every fault, exercises none himself, but
does the exact opposite ; for a punishment which
comes at the end of all things, when the world is over
and done with, cannot have for its object either to
improve or deter, and is therefore pure vengeance.
So that, on this view, the whole race is actually
destined to eternal torture and damnation, and
created expressly for this end, the only exception
being those few persons who are rescued by election
of grace, from what motive one does not know.

Putting these aside, it looks as if the Blessed Lord
had created the world for the benefit of the devil ! it
would have been so much better not to have made it
at all. So much, then, for a dogma taken sensu
proprio. But look at it sensu allegorico, and the
whole matter becomes capable of a satisfactory inter-
pretation. What is absurd and revolting in this
dogma is, in the main, as I said, the simple outcome of
Jewish theism, with its " creation out of nothing," and
the really foolish and paradoxical denial of the doctrine
of metempsychosis which is involved in that idea, a
doctrine which is natural, to a certain extent self-
evident, and, with the exception of the Jews, accepted
by nearly the whole human race at all times. To
remove the enormous evil arising from Augustine's
dogma, and to modify its revolting nature, Pope
Gregory I., in the sixth century, very prudently
matured the doctrine of Purgatory, the essence of
which already existed in Origen, (cf. Bayle's article on
Origen, note B.). The doctrine was reguku^ly moor*

THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM. 109

porated into the faith of the Church, so that the
original view was much modified, and a certain
substitute provided for the doctrine of metempsy-
chosis ; for both the one and the other admit a process
of purification. To the same end, the doctrine of " the
Restoration of all things" (cnroKaTao-Tao-is) was estab-
lished, according to which, in the last act of the
Human Comedy, the sinners one and all will be
reinstated in integrum. It is only Protestants, with
their obstinate belief in the Bible, who cannot be
induced to give up eternal punishment in hell. If one
were spiteful, one might say, " much good may it do
them," but it is consoling to think that they really do
not believe the doctrine ; they leave it alone, thinking
in their hearts, " It can't be so bad as all that."

The rigid and systematic character of his mind led
Augustine, in his austere dogmatism and his resolute
definition of doctrines only just indicated in the
Bible and, as a matter of fact, resting on very vague
grounds, to give hard outlines to these doctrines and
to put a harsh construction on Christianity ; the result
of which is that his views ofiend us, and just as in
his day Pelagianism arose to combat them, so now
in our day Rationalism does the same. Take, for
example, the case as he states it generally in the De
Civitate Dei. Bk. xii. ch. 21. It comes to this : God
creates a being out of nothing, forbids him some
things, and enjoins others upon him ; and because
these commands are not obeyed he tortures him to all
eternity with every conceivable anguish ; and for this
purpose binds soul and body inseparably together, so
that, instead of the torment destroying this being by

110 THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM.

splitting him up into his elements and so setting him
free, he may live to eternal pain. This poor creature,
formed out of nothing! At least he has a claim on
his original nothing : he should be assured, as a matter
of right, of this last retreat, which, in any case, cannot
be a very evil one ; it is what he has inherited. I, at any
rate, cannot help sympathising with him. If you add
to this Augustine's remaining doctrines, that all this
does not depend on the man's own sins and omissions,
but was already predestined to happen, one really is
at a loss what to think. Our highly educated Ration-
alists say, to be sure, " It's all false, it's a mere
bugbear; we're in a state of constant progress, step
by step raising ourselves to ever greater perfection."
Ah ! what a pity we didn't begin sooner ; we should
already be there.

In the Christian system the devil is a personage of
the greatest importance. God is described as abso-
lutely good, wise and powerful ; and unless he were
counterbalanced by the devil it would be impossible
to see where the innumerable and measureless evils,
which predominate in the world come from, if there
were no devil to account for them. Nay, since the
Rationalists have done away with the devil the
damage inflicted on the other side has gone on grow-
ing, and is becoming more and more palpable; as might
have been foreseen, and was foreseen, by the orthodox.
The fact is that you cannot take away one pillar from
a building without endangering the rest of it. This
confirms the view, winch has been established on other
grounds, that Jehovah is a transformation of Ormuzd,

TUE CHKISTIAN SYSTEM. 111

and Satan of the Ahriman who must be taken in con-
nection with him. Orruuzd himself is a transformation
of Indra.

Christianity has this peculiar disadvantage that,
unlike other religions, it is not a pure system of
doctrine : its chief and essential feature is that it is a
history, a series of events, a collection of facts, a
statement of the actions and sufferings of individuals :
it is this history which constitutes dogma, and belief
in it is salvation. Other religions, Buddhism, for
instance, have, it is true, historical appendages, the
life, namely, of their founders : this, however, is not
part and parcel of the dogma, but is taken along with
it. For example, the Lalitavistara may be compared
with the Gospel so far as it contains the life of
Säkya-muni, the Buddha of the present period of the
world's history; but this is something which is quite
separate and different from the dogma, from the system
itself ; and for this reason — the lives of former Buddhas
were quite other, and those of the future will be quite
other, than the life of the Buddha of to-day. The
dogma is by no means one with the career of its
founder ; it does not rest on individual persons or
events ; it is something universal and equally valid
at all times. The Lalitavistara is not, then, a gospel
in the Christian sense of the word ; it is not the joyful
message of an act of redemption ; it is the career of
him who has shown how each one may redeem him-
jelf. The historical constitution of Christianity makes
the Chinese laugh at missionaries as story-tellers.

112 THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM.

I may mention here another fundamental error of
Christianity, an error which cannot be explained
away, and the mischievous consequences of which are
obvious every day : I mean the unnatural distinction
Christianity makes between man and the animal
world to which he really belongs. It sets up man as
all-important, and looks upon animals as merely
things. Brahmanism and Buddhism, on the other
hand, true to the facts, recognise in a positive way
that man is related generally to the whole of nature,
and specially and principally to animal nature ; and
in their systems man is always represented, by the
theory of metempsychosis and otherwise, as closely
connected with the animal world. The important
part played by animals all through Buddhism and
Brahmanism, compared with the total disregard of
them in Judaism and Christianity, puts an end to
any question as to which system is nearer perfection,
however much we in Europe may have become ac-
customed to the absurdity of the claim. Christianity
contains, in fact, a great and essential imperfection in
limiting its precepts to man, and in refusing rights to
the entire animal world. As religion fails to protect
animals against the rough, unfeeling and often more
than bestial multitude, the duty falls to the police }
and as the police are unequal to the task, societies for
the protection of animals are now formed all over,
Europe and America. J In the whole of uncircumcised
Asia, such a procedure would be the most superfluous
thing in the world, because animals are there suffi-
ciently protected by religion, which even makes them
objects of charity. How such charitable feelings bear

THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM. 113

fruit may be seen, to take an example, in the great
hospital for animals at Surat, whither Christians,
Mohammedans and Jews can send their sick beasts,
which, if cured, are very rightly not restored to their
owners. In the same way, when a Brahman or Bud-
dhist has a slice of good luck, a happy issue in any
affair, instead of mumbling a Te Dt-um, he goes to the
market-place and buys birds and opens their cages at
the city gate ; a thing which may be frequently seen
in Astrachan, where the adherents of every religion
meet together ; and so on in a hundred similar ways.
, On the other hand,' look at the revolting ruffianism
] with which our Christian public treats its animals ;
i killing them for no object at all, and laughing over it,
or mutilating or torturing them ; even its horses, who
form its most direct means of livelihood, are strained
j to the utmost in their old age, and the last strength
• worked out of their poor bones until they succumb at
; last under the whip. One might say with truth,
Mankind are the devils of the earth, and the animals
the souls they torment, \ But what can you expect
from the masses, when there are men of education,
zoologists even, who, instead of admitting what is so
familiar to them, the essential identity of man and
animal, are bigoted and stupid enough to offer a
zealous opposition to their honest and rational col-
leagues, when they class man under the proper head
as an animal, or demonstrate the resemblance between
him and the chimpanzee or ourang-outang. It is a
revolting thing that a writer who is so pious and
Christian in his sentiments as Jung Stilling should
use a simile like this, in his Scenen aus dem Geister-

H

114 THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM.

reich. (Bk. II. sc. i., p. 15.) "Suddenly the skeleton
shrivelled up into an indescribably hideous and dwarf-
like form, just as when you bring a large spider into
the focus of a burning glass, and watch the purulent
blood hiss and bubble in the heat." This man of
God then was guilty of such infamy ! or looked on
quietly when another was committing it ! in either
case it comes to the same tiling here. So little harm
did he think of it that he tells us of it in passing, and
without a trace of emotion. Such are the effects of
the first chapter of Genesis, and, in fact, of the whole
of the Jewish conception of nature. The standard
recognised by the Hindus and Buddhists is the Maha-
vakya (the great word), — " tat-twam-asi," (this is thy-
self), which may always be spoken of every animal, to
keep us in mind of the identity of his inmost being
with ours. Perfection of morality, indeed! Non-
sense.

The fundamental characteristics of the Jewish
religion are realism and optimism, views of the world
which are closely allied ; they form, in fact, the con-
ditions of theism. For theism looks upon the material
world as absolutely real, and regards life as a pleasant
gift bestowed upon us. On the other hand, the
fundamental characteristics of the Brahman and
Buddhist religions are idealism and pessimism, which
look upon the existence of the world as in the nature
of a dream, and life as the result of our sins. In the
doctrines of the Zendavesta, from which, as is well
known, Judaism sprang, the pessimistic element is
represented by Ahriman. In Judaism. Ahriman has

THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM. 115

as Satan only a subordinate position ; but, like
Ahriman, he is the lord of snakes, scorpions, and ver-
min. But the Jewish s}rstem forthwith employs Satan
to correct its fundamental error of optimism, and in
the Fall introduces the element of pessimism, a doc-
trine demanded by the most obvious facts of the
world. There is no truer idea in Judaism than this,
although it transfers to the course of existence what
must be represented as its foundation and antecedent.

The New Testament, on the other hand, must be in
some way traceable to an Indian source : its ethical
system, its ascetic view of morality, its pessimism, and
its Avatar, are all thoroughly Indian. It is its
morality which places it in a position of such emphatic
and essential antagonism to the Old Testament, so that
the story of the Fall is the only possible point of
connection between the two. For when the Indian
doctrine was imported into the land of promise, two
very different things had to be combined : on the one
hand the consciousness of the corruption and misery
of the world, its need of deliverance and salvation
through an Avatar, together with a morality based on
self-denial and repentance ; on the other hand the
Jewish doctrine of Monotheism, with its corollary that
' all things are very good," (irdvra /«xAa Atav.) And the
task succeeded as far as it could, as far, that is, as it
was possible to combine two such heterogeneous and
antagonistic creeds.

As ivy clings for the support and stay it wants to a
rough-hewn post, everywhere conforming to its
irregularities and showing their outline, but at the
same time covering them with life and grace, and

116 THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM.

changing the former aspect into one that is pleasing
to the eye ; so the Christian faith, sprung from the
wisdom of India, overspreads the old trunk of rude
Judaism, a tree of alien growth ; the original form
must in part remain, but it suffers a complete change
and becomes full of life and truth, so that it appears
to be the same tree, but is really another.

Judaism had represented the Creator as separated
from the world, which he produced out of nothing.
Christianity identifies this Creator with the Saviour,
and through him, with humanity : he stands as their
representative ; they are redeemed in him, just as they
fell in Adam, and have lain ever since in the bonds of
iniquity, corruption, suffering and death. Such is the
view taken by Christianity in common with Buddhism :
the world can no longer be looked at in the light of
Jewish optimism, which found " all things very good : "
nay, in the Christian scheme, the devil is named as its
Prince or Ruler, (o apx^v rdv Koa-fxov tovtov. John 12,
33). The world is no longer an end, but a means ;
and the realm of everlasting joy lies bej'ond it and the
grave. Resignation in this world and direction of all
our hopes to a better form the spirit of Christianity.
The way to this end is opened by the Atonement, that
is, the Redemption from this world and its ways;
and in the moral system, instead of the law of ven-
geance, there is the command to love your enemy ;
instead of the promise of innumerable posterity, the
assurance of eternal life ; instead of visiting the sins
of the fathers upon the children to the third and
fourth generations, the Holy Spirit which over-
shadows all.

THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM. 117

We see, then, that the doctrines of the Old Testa-
ment are rectified and their meaning changed by those
of the New, so that in the most important and essen-
tial matters an agreement is brought about between
them and the old religions of India. Everything
which is true in Christianity may also be found in
Brahmanism and Buddhism. But in Hinduism and
Buddhism you will look in vain for any parallel to
the Jewish doctrines of " a nothing quickened into
life," or of " a world made in time," which cannot be
humble enough in its thanks and praises to Jehovah
for an ephemeral existence full of misery, anguish and
need.

Whoever seriously thinks that superhuman beings
have ever given our race information as to the aim of
its existence and that of the world is still in his child-
hood. There is no other revelation than the thoughts
of the wise, even though these thoughts, liable to
error as is the lot of everything human, are often
clothed in strange allegories and myths under the name
of religion. So far, then, it is a matter of indifference
whether a man lives and dies in reliance on his own or
another's thoughts ; for it is never more than human
thought, human opinion, which he trusts. Still, instead
of trusting what their own minds tell them, men have
as a rule a weakness for trusting others who pretend
to supernatural sources of knowledge. Nay, in view
of the enormous intellectual inequality between man
and man, it is easy to see that the thoughts of one
mind might appear as in some sense a revelation to
another.

THK

FAILURE OF PHILOSOPHY:

A BRIEF DIALOGUE.

THE FAILURE OF PHILOSOPHY:

A BRIEF DIALOGUE.

A. Philosophy has hitherto been a failure. it
could not, indeed, have been otherwise ; because,
instead of confining himself to the better under-
standing of the world as given in experience, the
philosopher has aspired to pass at one bound beyond
it, in the hope of discovering the last foundation of
all existence and the eternal relations of things.
Now these are matters which our intellect is quite
incapable of grasping. Its power of comprehension
never reaches beyond what philosophers call "finite
things," or, as they sometimes say, " phenomena ; " in
short, just the fleeting shadows of this world, and the
interests of the individual, the furtherance of his aims
and the maintenance of his person. And since our
intellect is thus immanent, our philosophy should be
immanent too, and not soar to supramundane things,
but be content with gaining a thorough grasp of the
world of experience. It surely provides matter
enough for such a study.

B. If that is so, intellect is a miserable present for
Nature to give us. According to your view, the
mind serves only to grasp the relations that constitute
our wretched existence as individuals— relations
which cease with the brief span of our temporal life ;

122 THE FAILURE OF PHILOSOPHY,

and is utterly unsuited to face those problems which
are alone worthy to interest a thinking being — what
our existence really is, and what the world means as
a whole ; in short, how we are to solve the riddle of
this dream of life. If all this is so, and our mind
could never grasp these things even though they were
explained to it, then I cannot see that it is worth my
while to educate my mind, or to pay any attention to
it at all ; it is a thing unworthy of any respect.

A. My dear sir, if we wrangle with Nature, we are
usually in the wrong. For Nature does nothing that
is useless or in vain — nihil facit frustra nee superva-
eanewm. We are only temporal, finite, fleeting beings,
creatures of a dream : and our existence passes away
like a shadow. What do we want with an intellect
to grasp things that are infinite, eternal, absolute ?
And how should such an intellect ever leave the
consideration of these high matters to apply itself
again to the small facts of our ephemeral life — the
facts that are the only realities for us and our proper
concern ? How could it ever be of any use for them
again ? If Nature had bestowed this intellect upon
us, the gift would not only have been an immense
mistake and quite in vain ; it would' even have con-
flicted with the very aims that Nature has designed
for us. For what good do we do, as Shakespeare

Bays,

We fools of Nature,
So horridly to shake mir disposition
With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls.1

If we had this perfect, this all embracing, meta
1 Bandet, I., Sc. 4.

■ ^

THE FAILURE OF PHILOSOPHY. 123

physical insight, should we be capable of any physical
insight at all, or of going about our proper business ?
Nay, it might plunge us for ever into a stttte of chill
horror, like that of one who has seen a ghost.

B. But surely in all this you are making a notorious
petitio principii. In saying that we are merely
temporal, fleeting, finite beings, you beg the whole
question. We are also infinite, eternal, and the
original principle of Nature itself. Is it not then well
worth our while to go on trying if we cannot fathom
Nature after all — ob nicht Natur zuletzt sich doch
ergründe ?

A. Yes ; but according to your own philosophy we
are infinite and eternal only in a certain sense. We
are infinite and eternal, not as phenomena, but as the
original principle of Nature ; not as individuals, but
as the inmost essence of the world ; not because we
are subjects of knowledge, but merely as manifesta-
tions of the will to live. The qualities of which you
speak are qualities that have to do with intelligence,
not will. As intelligent beings we are individual and
finite. Our intellect, then, is also of this character.
The aim of our life, if I may use a metaphorical
expression, is a practical, not a theoretical one ; our
actions, not our knowledge, appertain to eternity.
The use of the intellect is to guide our actions, and at
the same time to hold up the mirror to our will ; and
this is, in effect, what it does. If the intellect had
more to do, it would very probably become unfit even
for this. Think how a small superfluity of intellect
is a bar to the career of the man endowed with it.
Take the case of genius : while it may be an inward

124 THE FAILURE OF PHILOSOPHY.

blessing to its possessor, it may also make him very
unhappy in his relations with the world.1

B. Good, that you reminded me of genius. To
some extent it upsets the facts you are trying to
vindicate. A genius is a man whose theoretical side
enormously outweighs his practical. Even though he
cannot grasp eternal relations, he can see a little
deeper into the things of this world ; attamen est
quodam prodire tenus. It is quite true that this
does render the intellect of genius less fit to grasp the
finite things of earth ; just as a telescope is a good
thing, but not in a theatre. Here we seem to have
reached a point where we agree, and we need not
pursue the subject further.

1 Translators Note. This is a favourite remark of Schopen-
hauer's. Some account of his interesting theory of Genius
touched upon at the conclusion of this dialogue may be found
in the concluding section of another volume in the series,
The Art of Literatwrt.

THE

METAPHYSICS OF FINE ART.

THE METAPHYSICS OF FINE ART.

The real problem in the philosophy of Art may be
very simply state«! thus : How is it possible to take
pleasure in something that does nut come into any
relation with the will ?

Let me put this more fully. It is commonly felt
that pleasure and enjoyment in a thing can arise only
when it comes into some relation with our will, or, as
we prefer to say, when it serves some end which we
have in view. If this were so, it would seem to be a
contradiction to talk of pleasure which did not in-
volve bringing the will into play. And yet it is quite
obvious that we derive pleasure and enjoyment from
the Beautiful as such, quite apart from any connection
it may have with our personal aims, or, in other
words, with our will.

This problem I have solved in the following way :
By the Beautiful we mean the essential and original
forms of animate and inanimate Nature — in Platonic
language, the Ideas ; and these can be apprehended
only by their essential correlate, a knowing subject
free from will; in other words, a pure intelligence
without purpose or ends in view. Hence in the act
of aesthetic perception the will has absolutely no place
in consciousness. But it is the will alone which is the
fount of all our sorrows and sufferings, and if it thus

128 THE METAPHYSICS OF FINE ART.

vanishes from consciousness, the whole possibility of
suffering is taken away. This it is that explains the
feeling of pleasure which accompanies the perception
of the Beautiful.

If it should be objected that to take away the
possibility of suffering is also to take away the possi-
bility of enjoyment, it should be remembered that, as
I have often explained, happiness and satisfaction are
negative in their nature ; in other words, they are
merely freedom from suffering; whilst pain is the
positive element of existence. So that, when will
vanishes from consciousness, there yet remains over
the state of enjoyment ; that is to say, the state in
which there is a complete absence, not only of pain,
but in this case, even of the very possibility of it.

To be freed from oneself is what is meant by
becoming a pure intelligence. It consists in forget-
fulness of one's own aims and complete absorption in
the object of contemplation ; so that all we are con-
scious of is this one object. And since this is a state
of mind unattainable by most men, they are, as a rule,
unfitted for an objective attitude towards the world ;
and it is just this that constitutes the artistic faculty.

To the will as it exists in the individual is super-
added an intellectual faculty, which enables the will
to become conscious of itself and of the objects about
it. This intellectual faculty came into being in order
to perform the service of the will. Now, let us
suppose that the will sets the intellect at liberty for a
while and grants it a full release from its service, so
that the intellect may for the moment dismiss its
concern for the will; in other words, abandon the

THE METAPHYSICS OF FINE ART. 129

personal service which form« its only natural task,
and, therefore, its regular occupation. If, at the same
time that it is thus released, the intellect does not
cease to be active and energetic, and use every en-
deavour to arrive at a clear apprehension of the
world, it becomes completely objective ; that is to say,
it becomes a faithful mirror of the things about it.

It is only in this way, with a pure intelligence as
subject, that the object, pure and simple, can come
into existence. For this postulated relation between
subject and object to arise at all, it is necessary that
the intellectual faculty should not only be withdrawn
from its original service and be left altogether to
itself, but also that, when released, it should never-
theless preserve its whole energy of activity, in spite
of the fact that the stimulus of this activity, the im-
pulse of the will, is now abseut.

Therein lies the difficulty, and this is just why the
condition of mind necessary in artistic creation is so
rare ; because all our thoughts and endeavours, our
powers of sight and hearing, are always naturally
exerted, directly or indirectly, in the service of our
numerous personal aims, great and small. It is the
will that drives the intellect to the fulfilment of its
function, and the intellect flags at once if the spur is
withdrawn. Rendered active in this way, the intellect
is perfectly sufficient for the needs of practical life,
nay, even for the kind of knowledge required in
professional business. For there the aim is to under-
stand only the relations of things, not the inner reality
peculiar to them ; and this kind of knowledge pro-
ceeds by applying such principles of reasoning as

130 THE METAPHYSICS OF FINE ART.

govern the relations in which things may stand to
one another.

But though in the conception of a work of art the
intellect is all in all, in the execution of it, where the
aim is to communicate and represent what has been
conceived, the will may, nay, must become active
again ; just because there is an aim to be carried out.
Accordingly, in this sphere, the principles of reasoning
which govern the relations of things again comes into
play. It is in conformity with these principles that
the means used by Art are so contrived as to produce
artistic effects. Thus we find the painter concerned
with the accuracy of his drawing and the manipula-
tion of his colours, and the poet looking first to the
arrangement of his subject and then to a right use of
expression and the laws of metre.

In the selection of a theme, both poetry and the
plastic arts take some one individual person or thing
and endeavour to present it as a separate entity, with
all its peculiarities, even down to the minutest, ex-
nibited with the most accurate precision. Science, on
the other hand, works by the treatment of abstract
ideas, everyone of them representing innumerable
individuals ; and it proceeds to define and mark out
the characteristics of these ideas, so as to fix them once
for all. A comparison between these two methods
might lead one to suppose that Art is an insignificant,
petty, nay, almost childish pursuit. But the nature
of Art is such that with it one case holds good for a
thousand ; for by a careful and detailed preservation of
a single individual person or thing it aims at revealing
the idea of the genus to which that person or thing

THE METAPHYSICS OF FINE ART. 131

belongs. Thus some one event or scene in the life of
a man, described with complete truth — described, that
is to say, so as to exhibit precisely all the individuals
which go to make it what it is — gives us a clear and
profound insight into the idea of humanity itself, as
seen from this particular point of view. But, in spite
of this difference of method between Science and
Art. there is some similarity in their treatment of
single facts. For just as the botanist picks a single
flower from the boundless realm of the vegetable
world, and then takes it to pieces in order to demon-
strate, from the single specimen, the nature of the
plant itself, so the poet chooses out of the endless
turmoil of human life as it hurries incessantly on its
way, some one scene, nay, ot'len only some one mood,
some one sensation, so that he may show us from it
what is the life and character of man.

And thus it is that the greatest minds, Shakespeare
and Goethe, Raphael and Rembrandt, do not think it
unworthy of them to bring some quite ordinary person
before us — not even one that is anything beyond the
common — to delineate him with the greatest accuracy,
in the endeavour to show him to us in the most
minute particularity. For it is only when they are put
before us in this way that we can apprehend individual
and particular facts of life ; and that is why I have
defined poetry as the art of rousing the imagination
by means of words.

If the reader wishes for a direct example of the
advantage which intuitive knowledge — the primary
and fundamental kind — has over abstract thought, as
ihowing that Art reveals to us more than we can gain

132 THE METAPHYSICS OF FINE ART.

from all the sciences, let him look at a beautiful
human face, full of expressive emotion ; and that too
whether in nature itself or as presented to us by the
mediation of Art. How much deeper is the insight
gained into the essential character of man, nay, into
nature in general, by this sight than by all the words
and abstract expressions which may be used to
describe it. When a beautiful face beams with
laughter, it is as though a fine landscape were
suddenly iVuminated by a ray of light darting from
the clouds. Therefore ridete, puellce, ridete !

Let me here state the general reason why the idea,
in the Platonic meaning of the word, may be more
easily apprehended from a picture than from reality ;
in other language, why a picture makes a nearer ap-
proach to the idea. A work of art is some objective
reality as it appears after it has passed through a
subject. From this point of view it may be said to
bear the same relation to the mind as animal food,
which is vegetable food already assimilated, bears to
the body.

But there is another and deeper reason for the fact
in question. The product of plastic and pictorial art
does not present us, as reality does, with something
that exists once only and then is gone for ever — the
connection, I mean, between this particular matter and
this particular form. It is this connection which is
the essence of any concrete individuality, in the strict
sense of the word. This kind of art shows us the
form alone ; and this, if it were given in its whole
entirety, would be the Idea. The picture, therefore,
leads us at once from the individual to the mere form ;

THE MEfAPHYSICS OF FINE ART. 133

and this separation of the form from the matter brings
the form very much nearer thy Idea. Now every
artistic representation, whether painting or statue, is
just such a separation ; and hence this separation,
this disjunction of the form from the matter, is part
of the character of a work of «esthetic art, because it
is just the aim of such art to bring us to the know-
ledge of the Idea.

-. It is, therefore, essential to a work of art that it
should give the form alone without the matter; and,
further, that it should do so without any possibility
of mistake on the part of the spectator. This is really
the reason why wax figures produce no aesthetic im-
pression, and therefore are not, in the aesthetic sense,
works of art at all ; although, if they were well made,
they produce an illusion a hundred times greater than
the best picture or statue could effect; so that if
deceptive imitation of reality were the object of art,
they would have to take the first place. For a wax
figure of a man appears to give not only the mere
form but with it the matter as well, so that it pro-
duces the illusion that the man himself is standing
before you. The true work of art should lead us
from the individual fact, in other words, that which
exists once only, and then is gone for ever, to the
mere form or the Idea — in other words, that which
always exists an infinite number of times in an in-
finite number of ways. Instead of doing this, the
wax figure appears to present us with the individual
himself — in other words, with that which exists once
only, and then never again ; and yet, at the same time,
it fails to represent the life which gives such a fleeting

134 THE METAPHYSICS OF FINE ART.

existence its value. This is why a wax figure is re-
pulsive ; it is stiff and stark, and reminds us of a
corpse.

It might be thought that it is sculpture alone which
gives form without matter ; and that painting gives
matter as well as form, by making colour serve to
imitate matter and its composition. But this objection
would imply that form is to be taken in a purely
geometrical sense ; and that is not what is here meant.
Form must be taken in the philosophical sense of the
word, as the opposite of matter ; and therefore it in-
cludes colour, surface, texture; in short, quality, in
whatever it may consist. It is quite true that sculp-
ture alone gives form in the purely geometrical sense,
exhibiting it on a matter which the eye can see to be
foreign to the form, namely, marble ; and in this way
the form comes to stand by itself so as to strike the
eye at once.

But painting does not give matter at all, and it
gives only the mere appearance of the form, not in
the geometrical, but in the philosophical, sense just
described. Painting, I say, does not give even the form
itself, but only the mere appearance of it — that is to
say, merely its effect on one of our senses, the sense
of sight ; and that, too, only in so far as a particular
act of vision is concerned. This is why a picture in
oils does not really produce the illusion that the thing
represented is actually before us, both in form and
matter. The imitative truth of a picture is always
subordinated to certain admitted conditions of this
method of representation. Thus, by the unavoidable
suppression of the parallax of our two eyes, a picture

THE METAPHYSICS OF FIXE ART. 135

always makes things appear in tho way in which a
one-eyed person would see them. Therefore painting,
equally with sculptiu-e, gives the form alone ; for it
presents nothing but the effect of the form — an effect
confined to one of the senses only, namely, that of
sight.

In connection with this subject it is to be observed
that copper-plates and monochromes answer to a more
noble and elevated taste than chromographs and water-
colours, while the latter are preferred by persons of
little culture. This is obviously due to the fact that
pictures in black and white give the form alone, the
form, as it were, in the abstract ; and the apprehension
of this is, as we know, intellectual, in other words, a
matter of the intuitive understanding. Colour, on the
other hand, is merely an affair of sense, nay more, of a
particular arrangement in the organ of sight which
depends upon the activity of the retina. In respect
of the taste to which they appeal, coloured prints may
be likened to rhymed, and copper-plates to blank,
verse.1 The union of beauty and grace in the human
form is the clearest manifestation of the will on the
topmost stage of its objectivation, and for that very
reason the highest achievement of the plastic and
pictorial arts. But still everything that is natural is
beautiful. If there are some animals of which we
find a difficulty in believing this to be true, the reason
of it is that we are unable to look at them in a purely
objective light, so as to apprehend their Idea. We are
prevented from doing so by some unavoidable associa-
tion of thought, chiefly the result of some similarity
» Of. Wdt als Wille und Vorstellung, Vol. IL, p. 488.

136 THE METAPHYSICS OF FINE ART.

which forces itself upon our notice, as, for instance,
the similarity of the ape with man ; so that instead of
apprehending the idea of an ape, what we see is the
caricature of a man. In the same way a toad appears
to produce an effect upon us similar to that of dirt
and slime, and yet this is not enough to explain the
unbounded aversion, nay, the feeling of dread and
horror, which comes over some people at the sight of
this animal, as over others when they see a spider.
The feeling appears to be deeper than any mere
association can explain, and to be traceable to some
mysterious fact of a metaphysical nature.

The inorganic world, so far as it does not consist of
mere water, produces a very sad, nay, an oppressive
effect upon the feelings, whenever it is presented to
us quite by itself. Examples of what I mean are
afforded by districts which offer to the eye nothing
but a mass of bare crags ; that long valley of rocks,
for instance, without a trace of vegetation, near
Toulon, on the way to Marseilles. The same effect is
produced on a large scale, and in a much more striking
degree, by the African desert. The melancholy im-
pression which this kind of scenery makes is mainly
due to the fact that masses of inorganic matter obey
one law only, the law of gravity ; and consequently
everything is disposed in accordance with it.

Contrarily, the sight of vegetation produces a feel-
ing of direct pleasure, and that too in a high degree ;
and the pleasure is greater in proportion as th«
vegetation is rich, various, luxuriant, and left to itself.
The more immediate reason of this is that, in the case
of vegetation, the law of gravity appears to be over-

IHK METAPHYSICS Ol FINK ART. 137

come, as the vegetable world tends to move in a
direction the exact contrary of that taken by gravity.
This is, indeed, the direct way in which the pheno-
menon of life announces it* presence, as a new and
higher order of things. It is an order to which we
ourselves belong ,• it is something akin to us and the
element of our being. Hence, at the sight of it, ou-
heart is moved. That straight upward direction is
the source of our pleasurable feeling. This is why a
fine group of trees looks so much better if a few tall,
tapering pines shoot out from the middle of it. On
the other hand, a tree that has been cut down has lost
all its effect upon us : and one that grows obliquely
has not so much as one that stands straight up.
A tree which bends over the earth with its branches
obedient to the law of gravity makes us melancholy,
.and we call it the weeping willow.

Water neutralises in a great measure the oppressive
effect of its inorganic composition by its exceeding
mobility, which gives it an appearance of life, and
also by its constant interplay of light and shade.
Besides, water is absolutely indispensable for the ex-
istence of life.

But above and beyond this the pleasurable feeling
which the sight of vegetable nature gives us comes
from that look of rest, peace and satisfaction which it
wears ; whi 1st the animal world is mostly presented to
us in a state of unrest, pain, even of struggle. This
explains why it is so easy for the sight of vegetation
to put us into a state where we become a pure in-
telligence, freed from ourselves.

It is a very astonishing thing that vegetation, even

138 THE METAPHYSICS OF FINE ART.

of the commonest and humblest kind, is no sooner
withdrawn from the capricious influence of man than
it straightway groups itself picturesquely and strikes
the eye as beautiful. This is true of every little spot
of earth that has been left wild and uncultivated,
even though thistles, thorns and the commonest
flowers of the field were all it bore. Where the ground
is tilled — in cornfields, for instance, and kitchen-
gardens, the aesthetic element in the vegetable world
sinks to a minimum.

It has long been observed that eveiy thing con-
structed for the use of man, whether it is a building
or only an utensil, must, if it is to be beautiful, preserve
a certain similarity with the works of Nature. But a
mistake has been made in thinking that the similarity
must directly strike the eye and have to do with
the shape the thing takes ; as, for instance, that pillars
should represent trees or human limbs ; that ra«
ceptacles should be shaped like mussels or snail-shells,
or the calyx of a flower, and that vegetable or animal
forms should be met with everywhere in Art.

The similarity should be indirect ; that is to say, it
should lie not in the shape itself but in its character.
One shape may differ from another in actual appear-
ance and yet be the same in character. Accordingly,
buildings and utensils should not be imitated from
Nature, but should be constructed in the spirit of
Nature. This will show itself in a perfect adaptation
of means to ends, so that the thing itself and every part
of it may directly proclaim what its purpose is. This
will be effected when that purpose is attained in the
shortest way and in the simplest manner. It is just

THE MFTA PHYSICS OF FINE ART. 189

this striking conformity to a certain end that stamps
the products of Nature.

In Nature the will works from within outwards,
after completely dominating its material. But in Art
it works from without, by a process of intuition ; it
may be, by setting up the abstract idea of the purpose
which the object of art is to serve; it then attains its
end and delivers itself of its meaning by impressing
it upon some alien material; that is to say, some
material originally devoted to another form of will.
Yet for all that the character I have described as be-
longing to a product of Nature may be preserved.
This is shown by the ancient style of architecture,
where every part or member is precisely suited to the
purpose it is immediately meant to serve — a purpose
thus naively brought into view, and where there is a
total absence of anything that does not serve some
purpose.

To this is opposed that Gothic style, which owes its
mysterious appearance just to the multitude of aim-
less ornaments and accessories it displays, where we
are obliged to ascribe to them some purpose which we
cannot discern ; and again, that quite degenerate style
of architecture which affects originality by playing,
in all sorts of unnecessary and round about ways,
with the means used for producing artistic effect,
dallying capriciously with them, and at the same time
misunderstanding their aim.

The same remark holds good of ancient vessels and
utensils, the beauty of which is due to the fact that they
so naively express their nature, and the purpose they
were meant to serve ; and so of all other receptacles

140 THE METAPHYSICS OF FINE ART.

made by the ancients. We feel in looking at them
that if Nature had produced vases, ainphorae, lamps,
tables, stools, helmets, shields, armour and so on, they
would be made in that style.

As regards the birth of a work of art in a man's
mind, if he is only in a susceptible mood, almost any
object that comes within his range of perception will
begin to speak to him, in other words, will generate
in him some lively, penetrating, original thought. So
it is that a trivial event may become the seed of a
great and glorious work. Jacob Böhme is said to
have been enlightened upon some deep point of
natural science by the sudden sight of a tin can.

In the end it all depends upon the power a man has
in himself ; and just as no food or medicine will
bestow or take the place of vital energy, so no book
or study can give a man a mind of his own.

THE END.

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